


in the business of searching for a precedent

by lymricks



Series: you'll lose the blues in Chicago [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Multi, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-05 07:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lymricks/pseuds/lymricks
Summary: Steve hates that sometimes when he talks to Billy every single word comes out wrong or too slow, like he’s learning a foreign language. He guesses he kind of is.It should be easy. It isn't, but it will be.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> The title for this comes from an absolutely astounding piece of writing by Anne Carson. This is [ just a chunk of it ](https://78.media.tumblr.com/a32c747cebc534969e5190be95b7d4e4/tumblr_o61xbfzxmP1rskq39o4_r1_540.jpg), but the whole thing is wonderful.
> 
> This is a sequel to “knit more nearly together” and it stands alone just fine, I think (as long as you know it takes place three years post show), but for the full story you might want to start there.
> 
> Also, I literally can't stop writing them. I can't remember the last time I wrote this much stuff. Thanks for all the wonderful responses to the first one :)

Steve misses having a car sometimes, like on the day they leave Hawkins and Billy insists that they have to take a bus. They’re standing in the bus station, and it’s not even _in_ Hawkins. Steve is pretty sure the drive out here was so long that they’re practically back in Chicago, so he can't figure out why they couldn't just fly. He knows he’s being kind of a brat about the whole thing, but it’s because he feels jittery. Steve does his best work in clearly defined roles: popular high school kid, monster fighting babysitter, doing-ok-in-a-coffee-shop-guy. Christmas, and all that came with it, had been stupid and magical. His parents had come home for the twenty-four required hours, and Steve and Billy had played house, hanging all over each other and drinking his father’s scotch, dancing with the kind of abandon Steve hadn’t known Billy possessed. It had been perfect, and magic. It had been Christmas, but Christmas came and went, and so did the New Year--spraying bottles of champagne, chasing each other through the center of town. That, too, had been magical.

Steve misses his car, because in the cold light of an Indiana morning, he realizes he doesn’t know what _next_ looks like. Magic is great and the last week and a half had been perfect, but there’s--more to come, he knows. He’d asked Billy to come home with him to Chicago, but now it feels impulsive. The sun is too bright. Steve runs a hand through his hair and wishes he could just have driven them back. 

Whatever he and Billy are, it wasn’t clearly defined by movies, or breakfast, or bottles of champagne. It’s blurred at the edges and so nascent, this being _together_ that it makes Steve feel like he’s crawling out of his skin. Sometimes, though, Steve looks at Billy, like right now where he’s leaning against the pole in the bus station and smoking, and he feels like he’s crawling out of his skin with _want_ and there’s a knot in his stomach again, but it’s a kind of happy, confused knot. It isn’t all bad, the uncertainty. Sometimes it even feels like anticipation.

Nancy had driven them to the bus station. Dustin and Max had tried to come along, but she’d put her foot down. She had plans, Nancy had told them. Big plans near the bus station in the middle of nowhere. They were being nosey anyway, and Steve had known as they pulled out of his parents’ driveway that Nancy knew something had changed, and wanted answers, and figured that little siblings might hinder her investigation.

In the car, Billy had leaned forward from the back seat, his head right between Steve and Nancy on the highway and said, “I didn’t know a good girl like you could lie to little kids like that.”

There had been a moment when Steve had looked at Nancy’s white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and felt like he was going to get a phone call about choices, but after a second she’d relaxed, and smiled, kind of tight and amused all at once. “I find two faulty premises with your position,” she’d said, primly, and Steve had to hide a laugh behind his hand, feeling proud of his college girl and how she had always been so smart, but how wonderful it is to see her be so _funny_ so freely, to wield her intelligence with confidence. “The first is that I am not the good girl you think I am, but you’ll get to know me,” she’d winked and _fuck_ Steve loved her so much, was so grateful for her. “The second is that they’re hardly little kids anymore. I was basically younger when we had to--” 

Nancy had stopped then, like she remembered Billy had been on the peripherals, but probably doesn’t really know. She’d cut a glance at Steve, who had reached out and taken her hand where it landed on the center console of her car. They could do that now, and have it be friendly. Three years is a long enough time for some things, even if it isn’t for others. “When Barb died,” Steve had covered for her, and he hated that there had almost been a joke, but it had fizzled out.

Billy had flopped back dramatically against the car seat in the ensuing silent moment, “I think if you’re their age,” he’d said, “Our age then,” he’d paused, and Steve had turned around to look at him in the back. Billy still wore his shirts opened too low for the middle of the morning on a bus trip, and he’d grinned when he caught Steve staring. “I think that if you’re the age they are now, you should still get to be a little kid.” 

He flipped a pack of cigarettes between his fingers and broke eye contact with Steve, and there was another silent, heavy moment in the car. “That said, I would not wish the car trip back with Henderson after saying goodbye to his _soulmate_ , Steve, on anyone.”

The joke had landed. Nancy had laughed, a light pretty thing that she reserved for people she wanted to laugh around. Steve felt warm all over.

He doesn’t feel warm, now, after Nancy had left. “You don’t have to wait for us,” Steve had said to her, quietly, hugging her tight, even though he kind of wanted her to stay. 

“On the way back from the airport,” she’d said, a hand on his shoulder, “You said it wasn’t like that with Billy--”

Steve had tipped his head back and looked at the sky. He’d breathed in and out. Finally, he had looked over at Billy and smiled because Billy wasn’t even pretending not to stare at them. “It wasn’t,” Steve tells her, “It is now.”

Nancy had said goodbye to Billy by talking quietly to him--Steve couldn’t hear, and he was at least polite enough to pretend he was looking at the train schedule, and not at his ex-girlfriend-kind-of-best-friend and his--something? Having a conversation. Nancy had talked, and then taken one of Billy’s hands in both of hers and squeezed, and she’d smiled really brightly and then left.

It’s been a lot of minutes since she left and Steve feels restless and cold. There’s distance between him and Billy. Nothing is clearly defined, but right now, there is no one else at the bus station with them. The air feels heavy with snow, and if Billy hadn’t been vibrating to get out of Hawkins as much as Steve had been, if Hawkins had really felt like home to either of them, Steve might have tried to drag it out a few days--like Nancy is doing--to see if they could get stuck in the weather. But Hawkins isn’t home, and the air feels frozen and like snow, and there is no one else at the bus station.

Billy has been leaning against that pole, smoking, since Nancy’s car disappeared. They haven’t talked yet, not about what Nancy almost said in the car, or what Billy sort of said in the car. There will, Steve thinks, be lots of time for them to talk. He walks over to Billy and leans on the pole next to him. They’re too close to Hawkins for him to feel safe to really--do something, he guesses. Practically to Chicago--if the car ride was any indication--isn’t fucking far enough, but he does hook his chin over Billy’s shoulder for a second and touch his temple to Billy’s. 

Billy takes a drag from the cigarette in his hand and doesn’t say anything, but he sort of leans back into Steve, and they stay like that for several silent, solitary minutes, until they hear someone coming up the stairs and separate.

Steve can’t stop smiling the whole way back, even when it turns out that Billy planes-make-me-nervous-I-can’t-stop-moving Hargrove sleeps the _entire fucking ride_.

~

Billy does not make one single snide comment about the fact that Steve likes to leave Christmas lights up in the kitchen after Christmas. He does look a little bit surprised. When he offers to take them down--Steve thinks he’s trying to be helpful--Steve has a tiny, itty-bitty freak out about it, and so they stay up. It’s just a little string that’s _always_ up, but Billy hasn’t been in Steve’s apartment not around the holidays, and wouldn’t know. If they had gotten together before Steve had gone to the Byers’s for dinner back in Hawkins, Steve thinks Billy would have figured it out, but they hadn’t, so Billy doesn’t know the significance of the short line of multi-colored Christmas lights that frame the tiny kitchen window. Steve doesn’t tell him.

Steve goes back to work, and Billy starts looking for work, and nothing is clearly defined yet. It just--it isn’t _easy_ , and Steve wants it to be so badly. Nancy tells him on the phone that it probably won’t ever be easy, “But you need to talk with him about stuff,” she says, “Even if you don’t go into specifics.” Nancy hasn’t had an easy time of it either, but she’s doing a lot better. She tells Steve probably twice a week that it’s because, “I mean, I’m actively working on my shit, Steve, and you just keep hoping yours will go away. You have all this behind you, and it affects you, and your boyfriend should know about some of it.”

He wonders if that’s the clearly defined role that’s been missing: boyfriend. He hasn’t really been anyone’s boyfriend since he was Nancy’s, and the word feels like high school to him. That makes him feel jittery, too.

She’s right, though. And so is Jonathan, who agrees with Nancy and basically parrots what she says, even when Steve knows they’re not in the same room. 

They’re right, he’s thinking, lying in bed late one night. It isn’t easy. He wants it to be. He thinks it should be. It just--isn’t.

Billy is asleep in bed next to him, sort of half curled toward him. Billy only really--cuddles? When he’s been sleeping for a while, when Steve’s been sleeping for a while, when it doesn’t seem like something either of them are super invested in. That’s something Steve’s learning about Billy: he keeps his distance, even when they’re close enough that Steve can turn his whole body and bend, just a little at the waist, to press his lips to Billy’s bare shoulder.

That’s a thrill, low in Steve’s stomach. He’s had relationships since Nancy, obviously. One night stands, a more regular thing with a girl. A few boys. Billy is different. He’s more work and more real, carries the weight of Hawkins with him, the place that forged Steve and broke him a little more than he wants to admit, even to the people who know everything. 

Steve kisses Billy’s shoulder in the glow of the television, and Billy makes a sound that Steve will describe as a snuffle only in his brain and literally _never, not ever_ out loud, and it’s nice, kind of. Steve is getting used to it.

Tonight, for whatever reason, he’s having trouble sleeping. Billy’s nightmares have tapered off in the days since Steve first witnessed one, but it’s not like he’s home free, or anything. Billy sleeps longer and sounder, but the nightmares still come sometimes.

Steve’s having them more, though, or would have them more if he was sleeping more. He doesn’t need a fancy psychologist--or Nancy, who said it matter of factly over the phone--to tell him that Billy brings the _weight of Hawkins_ with him, and Steve’s been doing really great these last three years, but it’s not like he’s dealt with this shit--not _actively_. He’s sharing a bed with a dude he punched in the face the night he also like, was almost eaten by monsters. It’s bringing some shit to the surface. He’s handling it.

He’s handling it because he’s watching the news. Violence and feel-good stories play out in blue flashes, and next to him, Billy doesn’t stir. Steve doesn’t really watch him when he sleeps--like, not often anyway or whatever--but he does sometimes, and he’s never been able to shake the idea that Billy looks some kind of _soft_ when he’s sleeping. It makes Steve feel like there’s nothing out to get either of them. It’s 3am, and Steve has the day off tomorrow, so he’s watching the news in bed next to Billy, and it’s great.

~

It is not always great.

“I think we should talk about--stuff,” Steve says a few hours after a particularly nasty fight. They’ve been giving each other space, haven’t really talked about it, but he also thinks they fight too much. The part of his brain that sounds like Nancy says, _this isn’t healthy_ , and the part of his brain that sounds like Dustin says, _you actually can’t keep doing this, man_ and Steve knows that both of them are right.

So Steve gets them both beers and they sit on opposite sides of the couch. Billy’s sprawled, arms over the back, legs open, shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and he takes up more room than is rightfully his, and Steve--because he is still a _child_ , obviously, sits criss-cross applesauce in the corner he has left. Billy isn’t into talking about their-- _stuff_. Steve starts.

“I’ve like, been through some shit,” he says, and then stops, because he can’t _tell_ Billy his shit for like, scary men in labcoats reasons. He’s also pretty sure Billy wouldn’t believe him. So Steve stares at Billy and tries to figure out how to explain the depth of his own fucked-upness without talking about monsters or using words like trauma. He takes a sip of beer and a very deep breath. “It isn’t like your shit,” Steve says finally, which is true, even though they don’t _ever_ talk about Billy’s shit. “But it was--bad. I almost died and--” this feels really fucking dramatic, “Well I thought I might, anyway, but more importantly, Dustin--” _also almost died_ , he doesn’t say, because it’s hard to talk about that part of things. _Also your sister,_ he doesn’t say, _that’s why I was with her--we almost died together. You know how it is with monsters._ The next part he says out loud, which isn’t easy, but this _one_ thing he has learned to say out loud, because it’s the one thing that everyone knows: “And Barb did die. So I’ve got my like, things that I do to deal with it.” Like clean a lot. Like throw himself into his job. Like be fine, most of the time, and sometimes when things aren’t the way he likes them or wants them or accepts them, just freak out--about Christmas lights, and when to do the wash, about predictability and clearly defined roles. He knows that sometimes he can be a minefield just as much as Billy can.

Billy doesn’t pry. He doesn’t ask questions about Steve’s vague details, about the fact he didn’t really finish more than one sentence of explanation. Billy stares at Steve and drinks his beer, and Steve listens to him breathe. That’s a thing he’s starting to realize he does. He loves to listen to people in his life breathe. It’s a steady sort of thing, like a promise of being alive. Like what Dustin had done, clutched against his chest, or all of those stupid fucking kids in the innards of a hollowed out bus, monsters outside. Breathing means life, and Steve loves to listen to the people who matter to him live.

Sometimes, when Billy’s really asleep and Steve is up too late, but pretending to be sleeping, he puts his head on Billy’s chest and listens to his heartbeat. It’s reassuring against the shadows of a too-dark room. Sometimes Steve turns the news on for the light, and it wakes Billy up. So they’re both adjusting. Billy gets the news or he gets Steve’s face plastered to his chest. They’re handling it.

“So that’s why I freak out sometimes,” Steve finishes, which is a terrible closing and he wishes he could do it over. Not as much as he wishes his brain would think about what he says next, which is, “So like. What’s your stuff?”

Billy hadn’t really been moving on the couch, so Steve doesn’t understand why all of the sudden it feels like Billy has gone completely still. It’s something kind of spectacular to watch--the way that everything plays out behind Billy’s eyes. He’s angry that Steve asked; that’s the minefield. There’s something a little like terror. Steve knows the haunted look that tugs at the edges of Billy’s mouth, because it looks a lot like his own did--or Nancy’s in the aftermath. They don’t talk about Billy’s shit, ever, and Steve feels a little guilty that he knows so many of the details.

He’s also being a little unfair, and he knows that too. Steve’s shit chases him in shadows and makes him jump, but it’s long since over. Dormant, maybe, but long since over. Three years is a lot of distance, and Steve would be doing better, maybe, if he’d tried like Nancy to acknowledge that he wasn’t doing well. Billy doesn’t have anything like distance from his own stuff. Steve still thinks of their relationship as new, and even that started before the last time Billy’s dad hit him. Steve looks down at his lap and picks at a loose thread on his jeans. He can feel Billy looking at him, and so he listens to Billy breathe and waits him out. Sometimes all Billy needs is for someone to wait long enough for him to process everything and then put it into words. He doesn’t laugh at Steve’s question, which is how Steve knows Billy’s really thinking about it. 

When it’s almost uncomfortable, Billy says, “You can’t get up in my face.”

“What?” Steve looks up from his lap and tilts his head to the side.

“When we’re mad at each other. You can’t get up in my face.”

Steve stares at Billy. Billy stares back, all long lashes and too big, too light eyes. “Oh---kay,” Steve says finally. “I mean, I don’t want to--you don’t want me to do that, and so I don’t want to do it, but maybe we should have a way so you can--tell me?” Steve hates that sometimes when he talks to Billy every single word comes out wrong or too slow, like he’s learning a foreign language. He guesses he kind of is.

Billy snorts, “Like a safe word, Harrington?” Billy almost never calls him Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve says, then flushes. “No. I don’t know. Like, when I’m crossing a line, tell me. Just say back off or something.” Steve had said that once, to Billy. He thinks that even when he’s freaking out, he’ll know it’s significance if Billy is saying those words.

Billy snorts again. He, Steve thinks, spends a lot of time in this relationship--fuck, _relationship_ \--laughing at him. “All right, princess,” he says.

Steve doesn’t push it, because it cost Billy a lot to tell him. Later that night, he realizes Billy thinks it cost Steve a lot to listen. Billy doesn’t complain once about the tv, even when Steve presses his ear against Billy’s bare chest to listen, and he knows--he _knows_ he wakes Billy up, because Billy’s hand is suddenly in his hair, but Billy doesn’t shove him off or make him move, he just lets Steve lie there on his on his chest and plays with Steve’s hair. Billy lets the flickering light from the news chase away the shadows.

~

In the end, Billy only ever has to use the safe word once.

It’s been a long January, and Billy’s been fired from four jobs in as many weeks. The instability puts Steve on edge, makes him feel jagged. If he’s honest, it’s because it makes Billy’s place in Chicago feel impermanent. Steve spends more nights than he wants to thinking maybe this is it, he’s going to wake up and Billy’s gone. They aren’t the first four jobs Billy loses, but it’s rapidfire, and Steve dreams of Billy in a bloody t-shirt, of something dark dragging Billy away in the middle of the night. In every dream where Steve wakes up sweating, biting a pillow to muffle any sounds, Billy leaves.

It starts because Billy breaks the mug from Lucas’s sister, the one that spells out _Hawkins_ in childish, sloppy handwriting, and which reminds Steve of the good parts of home. Later, after--everything--Steve will remember, acknowledge, own, that it actually starts because the instability freaks him out, and Steve doesn’t really know how to handle it productively, so he acts like an absolute asshole.

“What the fuck,” he says, when Billy hands him the paycheck for half the week. It’ll cover the rent, obviously, Billy’s hasn’t yet left him hanging, but it will mean that Billy doesn’t have a reason to go to bed at a reasonable hour, to come home tired at the end of a long day. “You got fucking fired again?”

“That guy was a prick,” Billy says with a too-casual eyeroll. He’s rooting around in the fridge for a beer. “It’s fine. I’ll find something better. He doesn’t want an employee then that’s his problem, you know?”

“No. I don’t fucking _know_ , Billy, because I keep my job.”

Billy turns around, and honestly he looks a little startled. There’s a moment where he blinks at Steve, fingers still holding the fridge open. He slams it shut, though, hides the rest of it real quick. Smirks. “What’s the matter, princess?” he sneers, head tilted to the side. Billy licks his lips and grins, wide and sharp, all teeth. “Afraid I’m going to find something better and you won’t need to babysit me anymore?”

And yes, Steve is terrified of all variations of Billy leaving. “I’m more afraid you’re never going to amount to fucking anything,” Steve snaps back, because it’s easier than being honest. “Fuck, Billy. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Steve swears more readily than Billy. He needs the words for the full affect. Billy, though, swears only occasionally. Billy wields venom without profanity, and it cuts deeper. “You don’t want me out of your hair?” Billy taunts, echoing so many conversations, and Steve knows by the curl of Billy’s lip that he’s being laughed at. Steve’s stomach ties itself into knots.

“Fuck you,” Steve says, “Who would look for you if you weren’t in my hair anyways? You fucking asshole!”

The Hawkins mug is on the table, because Billy is terrible at cleaning up after himself and Steve had been, you know, at his _job_ all day. Billy slams his hands down on the table, and the table teeters because Steve had built it and not Hopper, and as it teeters, the mug slides and slides and slides and--

There’s a moment, right after the crash, when the two of them just stare silently at the shards of ugly mug, both of them breathing too hard.

Then Steve is in Billy’s face, because he loved that mug, because he doesn’t want to lose the shit about himself he doesn’t hate. Because Billy is _impermanent_ and that scares Steve. He’s in Billy’s face, shoving at his shoulders, crowding him against the wall, “You’re fucking unbelievable!”

Billy, prone, Steve’s hands fisted in his jacket, tips his head back against the wall. He’s staring at Steve through his eyelashes, his throat bared, and he isn’t breathing. He’s silent, and so, so still. “Unbelievable,” Steve shouts, his face too close to Billy’s. His hands are shaking where they’ve got fistfulls of jacket. “What, you don’t have a fucking thing to say for yourself?”

And Billy says, “Back off,” and still doesn’t really breathe. 

Steve goes absolutely fucking still.

“Back off,” Billy says again, his voice so quiet in an apartment suddenly void of noise, his throat still bare, his head tipped back against the wall. 

Steve lets go of him all at once, scrambles backwards so fast he trips over his own feet. He has to catch himself on that stupid fucking chair, and it tips over, making it’s own loud crash as it falls.

“Fuck,” he says, because he swears too much. It is like every little bit of anger has crumbled in his stomach. Billy’s still got himself pressed against the wall, his head, his back, even the tips of his fucking fingers. Steve has crossed a line, has pushed, and shoved. He thinks about the way he grabbed Billy. He thinks about the way Billy didn’t try to push back. Steve feels sick. He takes a step forward, “Billy, I--”

“Don’t,” Billy says, peeling himself off the wall. “I need a--” Billy stops. “Just. Don’t touch me.” He’s angry, Steve can tell--Billy’s always angry when he feels like he needs to defend himself, and Steve is probably lucky Billy hadn’t taken a swing. There’s more to it than that, though. Billy’s holding himself back, but he’s also holding himself together.

Steve watches Billy sink slowly down the wall, and it’s kind of weird to watch someone else do a variation of the breathing exercises Nancy had shown him to settle his own panic attacks. Steve watches though, until the tension in Billy’s shoulders eases. It’s a long time. Steve cleans the shards of the mug up, then wipes down the counter, and he’s just trying to watch Billy without it seeming like he’s staring. Steve doesn’t want to leave, so he cleans and recleans every surface. He’s wiping down the table when Billy’s shoulders finally sag. 

Steve takes a few steps toward him, and Billy doesn’t say anything when Steve leans against the wall, or when Steve slides down into a heap on the floor next to him. Steve sits, but he doesn’t try to touch him. He waits.

He listens to Billy breathe, heavy, wrecked panting at first, then something a little more normal, and Steve just--doesn’t move.

He’s an asshole, feels it in every inch of him. He wishes he’d done a better job of explaining his shit to Billy. He wishes he had a better handle on it. He wants them both to be better. Billy--the stuff he carries is more recent, but Steve feels like three years should be enough time to move on from chaos and monsters under his bed. It isn’t, though. He isn’t better yet.

After a long, long time, Billy says, “Let’s just go to bed.”

Billy turns the news on that night, which is it’s own kind of apology for the mug thing, because Steve knows the light and noise distract him when he’s trying to fall asleep. Steve kisses his bare shoulder and feels like a real asshole because Billy’s feeling guilty and _shouldn’t_ , and when Billy doesn’t say anything, Steve says, “I’m sorry,” and then he closes his eyes and rolls onto his side, giving Billy his distance.

Steve counts one heartbeat, then two, then three, before Billy--who doesn’t really cuddle unless they’re both deep in sleep, scoots up behind him, throws an arm over Steve’s waist, and pulls Steve into his chest.

~

Steve has a day off in the middle of February, and he spends it feeling like he can’t sit still. He cleans the bedroom, and he does the laundry, and he sweeps the space just inside the door. He reorganizes the kitchen, finds a better way to store his remaining hand-painted mugs, gifts from back home. He thinks about the Hawkins mug. Thinks that fight, this issue--this is something he can fix.

He tips the table over so he can see it’s underbelly and calls Hopper at work and makes him talk Steve through tightening this screw and adding another nail here. He’s got the chord stretched taut and the phone hooked under his chin when he finally rights the table. He gives it one experimental bang, then two. The table doesn’t teeter.

“Fuck, yeah!” Steve says. He nearly drops the phone as he pumps his fist.

“You all right, kid?” The casual way Hopper asks it almost fools Steve. Hopper has spent the majority of the phone call bemoaning Steve’s lack of natural carpentry skills and pretending Steve is a Very Important Lead every time someone walks into his office, Steve thinks for a second he’s talking to someone else, and then he thinks it has to do with the table, and then he gets it.

Steve, still holding the phone under his chin and banging on the table, shrugs before he realizes Hopper can’t see him. “I’m all good,” he says, like it’s easy.

Hopper sighs heavily. Steve pictures him pinching the bridge of his nose and shaking his head. “Yeah. Ok,” Hopper says finally. Steve rolls his eyes, shakes the table one last time and then, finally convinced no more mugs will be unduly sacrificed, drops down into the chair.

The chair hasn’t been tipped over in a while, actually. Steve’s thinking of getting a sign to post on the fridge: _No Chairs Tipped Over in ____________________ \--this one would read three weeks and four days, proudly.

That makes him think that Billy and him have been together for a long time. Or maybe not that long? Really only since November, but Steve is pretty sure he and Billy are in it for the long haul. It’s why they talk about their shit now. Well, sort of. Mostly they beat around the bush, but they’re aware of whatever in more than a tangential way, and Steve really thinks that’s progress.

Steve gets so caught up in thinking he forgets Hopper’s on the phone until Hopper says, “Listen, if you aren’t all right, you should tell me.” 

And Steve says, “Hi,” because he’s an idiot. Hopper heaves another drawn out sigh and Steve says, “I’m really all set. I’ll see you for--Easter?”

“I think it’s in March this year,” Hopper says. Easter is _Very Important_ to Mike and El for reasons that neither Hopper nor Steve nor Nancy have quite figured out yet. Steve remains certain, all these years later, that it has something to with how alike _eggs_ and _eggos_ sound. He’s almost positive that Eleven had been so excited about it the first time around she hadn’t wanted to lose face or disappoint Mike when it turned out to be about eggs.

“Cool, cool,” Steve says, but he’s losing track of the conversation. He’s still thinking about the sign he wants to put up about the chair-flipping and he’s noticing some smudges on the fridge, and he wants to clean the stove. He drums his fingers on the table. “Listen, thanks so much, Hop. I’ll let you get back to work.”

“You’ll _let_ me?” Hopper groans, but Steve can hear him laughing. “Yeah, ok kid. Very magnanimous of you. Thanks for that.”

Steve’s smiling when he hangs up the phone, but he feels tired. He looks at the smudges on the fridge and bounces his knee. Then he gets up to fill the sink with warm, soapy water. He stands, impatient, at the sink while it fills, casting an eye around the apartment again. The Christmas lights aren’t on yet, but the mid-morning sun beams through the tiny kitchen window. Steve thinks he needs to clean the smudges off of that, too. He rolls his sleeves up, pushes his hair back out of his face, and gets to work.

It’s dark out and late when Billy comes home. Steve’s got the couch cushions pulled up and is vacuuming underneath them. “Hi,” Steve says when he hears the door open, then, “You’re kind of a disgusting crumb leaver,” and then, “How was work?”

They’ve got a rhythm to the end of the work day and the start of their evening, now. It’s a _rhythm_ and Steve loves that, because it’s clearly defined. Billy gets a beer from the fridge and drops down into a chair before he answers, “It was good.” Steve can feel Billy’s eyes tracking his movements as he goes to the trash can to empty the crumbs. “You good, Harrington?” Billy asks after a few seconds of Steve shaking the stupid thing and looking inside of it to see if he got all the crumbs. People are asking Steve that a lot today.

When Steve finally turns around to answer Billy’s question, Billy isn’t in a chair anymore. He’s turning off the hallway light, and then the bedroom one. Billy glances at him, kind of--kind of assessing, actually, like he’s checking on Steve’s reaction. Then Billy goes back into the living room and turns off one of the three lamps Steve has on. Steve looks at the newly darkened spaces and nods, once, kind of tightly. “I’m fine,” he says. “You want dinner?”

So they eat, and Billy offers to do the dishes--Steve is pretty sure it’s a fake offer, as if Steve is going to let Billy do his version of _cleaning the dishes_ \--and then they go into the bedroom. Billy’s grabbing Steve by the hips, pulling him in close and tight. Billy’s got a hand sliding down Steve’s stomach, tugging at the waistband of his sweatpants. There’s a second when Steve closes his eyes and leans into it, but he still feels like he can’t hold still, so he disentangles himself from Billy, leaves him to get into bed while Steve goes out into the living room again and wipes down the table because there’s crumbs from dinner.

Steve knows that sometimes Billy goes to bed earlier than he would if Steve weren’t around. He knows there are nights when Billy watches him turn lights on and on and on, or watch him bounce his knee. Nights that make Billy stand up and turn off the tv and go to bed just because Steve’s yawning and he’s got an early shift in the morning, and Billy knows that Steve won’t go to bed unless they’re both there. Steve knows that, but he still leaves Billy in the bedroom and spends fifteen minutes fussing in the kitchen, feeling like something is crawling under his skin.

Steve goes back into the room and falls asleep with the tv on, earlier than he’d wanted to, and before he felt like the shadows were gone.

It was an error in judgement.

Steve is in a cave, and something is running. Steve is in the hallway at school, and there’s the sound of a speeding car. Steve is lying flat on his back in the Byers’s house, choking on his own blood, and there’s the terrible rage-filled, guttural scream of a monster overhead. Steve is in a tunnel under the Earth, and something is squelching wrong-wrong- _wrong_ under his feet. Steve drops Dustin, can’t hold on, he’s too heavy. The monsters are there, then. They come out of the shadows with their wide open mouths and quick, creeping movements.

Steve wakes himself up screaming.

He’s sitting in his bed in his apartment in Chicago. He catalogs these details first. There’s someone breathing next to him--Billy, and Steve can just make out the way Billy lifts himself up onto his elbows, then sits all the way up in bed. Steve is shaking so hard he wonders why Billy can’t hear his bones rattling. He’s pretty sure Billy is saying something to him, but he can’t hear him over the sound of his rattling bones, the rushing in his ears, the echoes of the monsters’ strange sounds.

Billy, Steve will realize a few hours later, must have turned off the news. It’s why the room got so dark.

His brain connects to his fingers and Steve shifts his hand, grabs at Billy’s and clutches. He doesn’t realize he hadn’t been sure Billy would grab back until Billy’s fingers tangle with his. “Turn on the tv,” Steve says around clenched teeth. He closes his eyes and keeps them shut until the warm blue flashes light up the farthest corners of the room.

Steve is embarrassed, he’s so embarrassed, and he’s going to think about that non-stop once he gets the rest of his brain on board. Embarrassed would be a relief. Right now he can barely choke down the copper taste of adrenaline as his heart pounds. It’s another minute before Steve can feel enough of his limbs to launch himself out of the bed. He half walks, half scrambles into the living room. He knocks over two of the three lamps turning them on and leaves them on the floor. They cast shadows on the ceiling. He turns the heat up. He puts a pot of coffee on. Over the long sleeved shirt he sleeps in he pulls the nearest sweatshirt he can find. It’s dark green and was crumpled in a weird corner of the hallway, which probably means it’s Billy’s. He grabs the blanket on the couch too and throws it over his shoulders. His mind stutters, tripping over the same phrase, _it likes the cold_ and he turns the heat up again.

“Harrington?” Billy hedges, kind of soft. Steve turns around. Billy’s framed in the shadow of the bedroom doorway; it looks so dark now that Steve’s turned on every possible light out here. 

“Uhm,” Steve says, and his brain really short-circuits now, because Billy’s standing there in nothing but a pair of Steve’s basketball shorts, and they’re just this side of too tight, sitting on Billy’s hips like that.

The clarity is like a wave of frozen water. The embarrassment is like being set on fire.

“Uhm,” Steve says again. He’s still staring kind of dumbly at Billy, and it’s four in the fucking morning. He’s wearing a sweatshirt over his shirt, standing wrapped in a blanket while coffee brews. A few minutes ago, he’d woken himself up--and Billy, too, obviously, _fuck_ \--screaming. Steve runs a hand through his hair and sits down on the couch. He puts his head in his hands, “Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”

Steve is grateful for the distance Billy gives him in that moment without leaving Steve’s line of sight. The coffee machine beeps and Billy pours them two mugs. He sets those down on the coffee table and then Steve listens to him quietly pick up the lamps and put them back where they belong. He’s grateful, too, when he feels the couch sink with Billy’s weight a few moments after.

“Man, you weren’t kidding about having your own shit, were you?” Billy asks, and Steve groans, _Oh my god_ into his hands again, and is convinced he has never in his life been so embarrassed. Not even the time Dustin had walked in on him with a girl, both of them in his bed--not quite as far along as Steve had been hoping things would go. He’d honestly just been glad to be getting near someone post-Nancy, and Dustin had waltzed right the fuck in, said, “Oh don’t mind me, I can just wait,” and plopped down on the end of the bed. Steve had kicked _the girl_ out, because Dustin had needed something, and then he’d had to change the section of science he was in so that he’d never have to see her again. 

This is way worse than that.

“Billy, I--”

“Don’t,” Billy says. “You don’t need to say sorry for this kind of thing, Harrington.”

“Fuck,” Steve says, finally taking his face out of his hands and sprawling back across the couch. “I appreciate that you don’t think I do, but it’s like 4am and we both have to work tomorrow--today, fuck,” Steve picks up the mug of coffee and holds it. He’s still sweating a little, feels sticky and hot, but he holds the warm coffee to his chest anyway.

Billy shrugs, “It’s really fine, Harrington, I----the fuck?”

The phone is ringing. Steve gets up, blanket and all, and answers. “Hello?

“Hey Steve-o,” says Dustin at 4am. Steve can picture him in stupid pajamas, standing in the middle of his kitchen, looking kind of cautiously at his mom’s bedroom door for a light.

“Hi Dustin,” Steve says, and Billy’s eyes go comically wide. “What’s up?”

Dustin tries--and fails, miserably--to sound casual when he says, “Well, you know, El radioed and I thought, hey, I haven’t talked to my buddy Steve in a long time, maybe Billy killed him, I should definitely call him right now in this moment and make sure he’s ok!” he sounds chipper and bright, but _knowing_ too, and Steve takes a second to feel really, truly embarrassed that his sort-of little brother is calling to make sure he’s ok after a nightmare.

“Tell El and the rest of the termites that I’m fine,” he says. “Billy didn’t kill me.” He wonders if Max has a radio, if she knows that he woke up screaming in the middle of the night, because one of the kids Steve hasn’t been able to stop loving since the moment they came screaming into his life has freaky psychic powers and knew he was having a nightmare.

Billy is staring at him from the couch, saying, “What the _fuck_?” out loud and looking torn between annoyed and concerned. Steve thinks about how weird this must look to him, and then realizes he’d said _Billy didn’t kill me_ and feels like an asshole, because Billy is doing the literal opposite of hurting him, especially in this exact moment, and it isn’t a funny joke anymore.

“I’m really good. Billy’s really good,” he hesitates, this is awful and awkward, and he’s sweaty and embarrassed and exhausted, “We--Billy and I, Dustin, we are really good?” he says it like a question, kind of looking at Billy.

Billy rolls his eyes, walks into the kitchen, and pointedly flips the chair over.

Steve hits head against the wall. 

“Oh. Cool,” Dustin says, and Steve can hear the shuffle of his curls bouncing against the phone as he nods. “That’s really awesome. Not actually why I called though, if you catch my drift.”

Steve hits his head against the wall a second time for good measure. “I know,” he says, soft all of the sudden. “Tell El I appreciate it, and that I’m sorry if I woke her.” Billy is staring at him again, saying _what the fuck_ with some additional hand gestures. “I’m ok, though,” he says.

“She was really worried, man,” Dustin insists.

For her to radio Dustin, she must have been. It’s been a long time since Steve’s had a nightmare this bad, and he should have known it was coming. _Not your fault_ says the part of his brain that sounds like--well, Billy, actually. Weird. He wishes he’d noticed his mood earlier, Billy had, even Hopper had asked. Steve feels a little stupid and a lot tired. He’s a mess, and she’d radioed Dustin, which means they all must know. He’s a mess and every little dipshit he cares about knows it.

In the aftermath of everything, Steve had spent a lot of time focusing his nervous energy on worrying about the kids. The _effect_ he kept insisting to Nancy and Jonathan, would be _bad_. He’d been a little obsessive about it, and one day Nancy had pulled him aside after English class. She was taking two that semester, her advanced class and his--not--because she wanted to get the _full scope of the literature_ or something, whatever, and she’d snatched his copy of To Kill a Mockingbird out of his hand. “Were you listening?” she’d asked, waving it in his face. He shook his head and she’d rolled her eyes and thumbed through towards the end.

“Right here,” she’d said, jabbing her finger into the book. It’d kind of looked painful. “A really terrible thing has happened to the kids, and one of them got hurt. The doctor tells his sister--he says,” she reads from the book then, in a softer voice--her reading voice, “‘‘He’ll be as good as new,’” she’d paused, hadn’t need to look at the book to read him the next part, held his gaze. “‘Boys his age bounce.’”

Steve still likes that quote, wishes that he had been at the right age to bounce. “I’m really ok,” he tells Dustin again, even though he isn’t, but it’s not like Dustin can fix him. “You have school tomorrow, kid,” he reminds him, and Dustin sighs loudly. “Tell the termites that it’s ok. Tell them--” he glances at Billy, who has started doing some weird _what the fuck_ \--jig? Dance? Steve can’t think of the right word for it, but it makes him smile. “Tell them Billy’s got me, all right?”

Billy stops moving so suddenly that Steve wonders if he’d said something wrong. 

“All right,” Dustin says, a little dubiously. “Night, Steve-o.”

“Night, bud,” Steve says, and hangs up the phone. He looks at Billy, who still isn’t moving. He owes him an explanation, but not one that’s going to violate any contracts with the government. Also, his whole world had been tipped on his side when he found out. He never wants to do that to Billy. “Listen,” he says, “There’s--some weird stuff in the world, that I don’t think you’d believe or like, care about probably.But you know how people sometimes say that have a _feeling_ something is wrong? One of the kids--you don’t know this one, I don’t think?--had a feeling and that’s why Dustin called.”

“Ok,” Billy says. He walks forward and catches Steve by the hips, pulling the blanket off his shoulders. “Sure.” He tangles his fingers in Steve’s sweatshirt, tugging a little and pressing his nose into Steve’s jaw. Billy kisses lower, scrapes his teeth against Steve’s throat and Steve exhales. 

“Billy?”

“You said you’re fine because I’ve got you,” Billy mumbles against Steve’s neck, he straightens, pushes his lips against Steve’s ear, “So I’ve got you,” he whispers, and Steve feels warm want in his stomach.

Billy backs him against the couch, until Steve’s knees hit it and he sits down. Suddenly, he’s got a lapful of Billy, who kisses him hard and insistent, and Steve loses himself in it. Lets himself get lost in it as Billy drags his hand down Steve’s stomach and palms him through his shorts. Steve exhales and feels himself relax, lets Billy get him off right there on the couch at 4:15 in the morning, mess be damned.

He feels tired at work the whole next day, but he also feels kind of loose and relaxed. _Billy’s got me_ , he’d said. What feels the best, maybe, is that he isn’t even really surprised that he’d been right.

~

“Your children are coming here,” Billy says to him about a week after the nightmare thing. Steve has just walked in from work. He smells like coffee and wants a shower.

“What?” he says, which is probably the wrong response. He should have said, he realizes, _I don’t have any children_ , but now it’s too late.

“Max called me,” Billy says, which is kind of a weird sentence because he didn’t know Max and Billy were at a talking on the phone place, but Steve likes the way it sounds. “Because she has manners unlike the rest of _your_ children and wanted to warn me. They think it’s going to be a _fun surprise_. They’re going to be here in less than an hour.”

“It’s a Thursday night! They have school tomorrow,” Steve protests, kind of dumbly.

“Oh my god,” Billy says, “Because that’s the real thing we should be worried about.”

Steve doesn’t get it--until he just does. Billy is sitting at the kitchen table, kind of hunched over a mug--the ugly cat one from Dustin--and he hasn’t looked up from it once. He’s got his shoulders kind of curled into himself, and he hasn’t rolled his eyes or tipped a chair or done anything except hold onto the mug and state facts about imminent arrivals. Max had called him. Billy looks withdrawn and small, and he’s been looking that way a lot less lately. Steve wants to uncurl him, wants to make Billy take up space just because. “Ok,” Steve says, walking up behind him and catching Billy by the shoulders. He just kind of stands there, doesn’t really know what to do with whatever Billy’s feeling, because Billy hasn’t said it in words Steve really understands yet.

“Get off me, Harrington,” Billy snaps, but it’s not _back off_ so Steve lets go only long enough to sit next to Billy, and then he pokes the back of Billy’s hand where it’s wrapped around the mug until Billy lets go of it. Steve grabs his hand and grins blindingly when Billy finally looks up.

“This is a fun surprise,” Steve insists, “And they--know,” he pauses, “About us. I told Dustin. That means they all know.”

Steve likes clearly defined. It’s why he’d told them about it. Steve likes the idea of the--six, oh shit, there are _six_ \--termites coming to Chicago. He isn’t wild about them skipping school, but in the grand scheme of things it won’t be the end of the world. He’d skipped a lot of school, once.

Steve likes things clearly defined, and he thinks that an apartment full of termites defines him and Billy in a way that Steve’s been looking for. He’s realizing now that it potentially scares Billy shitless. “This is a fun surprise,” Steve repeats. “But I need a shower before they get here.”

“Gotta do your hair, princess?” Billy says, but it’s kind of half-hearted.

Steve is pretty sure he just looks at Billy like he’s soft and gooey, he’s like, so stupidly invested in whatever this kind of smudgily defined thing is, when he says, “You know it, Hargrove,” and he kisses Billy on the cheek, really sloppy and gross.

Billy doesn’t tip the chair over, so Steve’s calling it a win.

When he comes back out of the shower, though, Billy is nowhere to be seen. He’s not on the fire escape, or in the kitchen, or the bedroom, Steve even checks the bathroom--even though he’d just come out of there, just in case. Steve glances at the clock and wonders how much time they have before the kids get here. He scrubs at his face, standing in the apartment and wondering what he’s supposed to do next. This is important to him, but it scares Billy. Steve wants to have Billy’s back the way that Billy’s proven to have his.

So he pulls on a jacket and jogs down the eight million flights of stairs. He finds Billy smoking on the steps up to his apartment. “Hey,” he says, dropping down next to Billy and bumping their shoulders together. Billy glances at him, but doesn’t answer. Steve’s cold. He huddles in closer and drops his head on Billy’s shoulder. He counts the cars passing in the street. He wonders who’s driving, and if they’re a safe driver. He hopes it isn’t Mike, who is a _truly_ terrible driver. Steve presses himself against Billy’s side until Billy heaves a sigh and throw his arm around Steve’s shoulders. “I’m nervous,” he mumbles, and Steve says, “Sorry, what was that, I couldn’t hear you over how gruff and manly you were trying to sound,” and Billy pinches his shoulder but says, “I’m nervous, ok Harrington? Fuck.”

Steve almost says, _This is going to be a fun surprise_ again, but he doesn’t. He nods, “I know you are,” he says finally, and wishes he were more eloquent. Nancy would have Advice and Jonathan would have unwavering support, and Hopper would--be Hopper--and Billy would feel better because of it. Steve is none of those people, is honestly still figuring himself out, so he says, “It’s ok that you are. But they’re going to--” he doesn’t say, _love you_ even though he wants to, because Billy had been a fucked up, terrible, goddamn awful person once, and Steve won’t pretend otherwise. “They’re going to--” he repeats, and stops, because talking to Billy makes his words come out all wrong and slow. “They’re going to know that I love you,” he says finally, and his stomach flips and flips and flips and honestly, if it comes out of his _eyeballs_ Steve wouldn’t be surprised right now. He can feel himself blushing. “And that’s going to be enough for them to try and make it work, ok?”

Billy is quiet for several long heartbeats after that. He takes a drag from the cigarette and exhales smoke away from Steve’s face, which is nice. Steve reaches nervous fingers up and takes it from him, takes a long drag himself. He closes his eyes as he breathes out, waiting. “Ok,” Billy says quietly. Steve feels him turn a little, feels Billy’s lips press against his hair, “Ok,” Billy says again, and he squeezes Steve. He doesn’t say it back, but Steve realizes that he doesn’t have to.

Then there’s the loud sound of a car hitting the curb, someone saying, “ _Shit!_ My bad, my bad!” It’s Mike. Mike drove the kids from Hawkins to Chicago. Mike is parked _on the curb_ outside of Steve’s apartment. It’s kind of like a clown car, watching lanky teenagers pile out laughing and shouting at each other.

“Five seats!” Steve finds himself yelling hoarsely as he untangles himself from Billy. “There are _five seats_ in a car, so I cannot figure out why six of you just got out of it!”

“It’s ok,” Will is saying, and he’s kind of staring at Billy where Steve left him on the steps. “I’m small so I sat on the floor sometimes.”

“ _What_ ” Steve says, dumbly, “The--you--that’s--” he’s sputtering, and Mike has to save him by clapping a hand on his shoulder. “I think I parallel parked!” he says, excited, and Steve stares blankly at him and then pointedly at the car that is still _on the curb_ and Mike just smiles. Steve throws his hands up in the air. “What,” he says again.

The kids crowd into the doorway, cold and ready to go inside, and Steve tells them he left the door open. They half run, four of them thundering up each of the eight million flights, and Steve can hear the moment they get to the apartment because they slam the door shut behind them.

Then it’s just Dustin and Billy and Max and Steve and the car--it used to be Nancy’s, which explains why Mike drove--parked on the curb. They are all four of them looking at each other. Steve wonders who will break the silence first. If he’s actually going to have to tell Dustin out loud that he’s in love with Billy, jesus fuck that would be horrifying, he really fucking hopes he isn’t going to have to do that.

It’s Max who talks first. “You never said sorry,” she says, looking at Billy. “I know that actions speak louder and whatever, but you need to say sorry.”

Billy’s got another cigarette lit, or maybe Steve handed it back to him when the kids got here, he isn’t actually sure, but Steve can see that his hands are shaking. Steve wants to yell at Max to shut up, but Billy was a bad and fucked up person, who did really awful, horrifying things, to Max, and to the kids, and to Steve. Steve can only forgive Billy for himself, and some days it’s easier to do that than others, and right now it’s really hard to watch Billy hunch in with shaking fingers.

“Yeah,” Billy says finally. “You’re right.”

Max speaks in Billy’s language, Steve realizes, the one he’s still trying to figure out, the one that keeps tripping him up. Steve is so jealous of her for a second he can’t breathe for it, and then he feels like an asshole, because you don’t speak that language unless you’ve been through some real shit together.

“We love Steve,” Dustin says after a second of Billy and Max kind of looking at each other. “We will like you. Probably.” Then he walks up the stairs, and Steve can hear him banging on the apartment door, which they must have locked. Steve wonders if they’ve all four got their faces smushed against the window, or if El is somehow listening and they’re all huddled on the couch. Steve’s neighbors are going to call the police on him, probably. He’s going to have to move. This is insane.

He looks at Billy and Max, waiting for someone to do something. “We’ll be up in a few minutes,” Billy says, putting out the cigarette. 

Steve lingers for a second, but Billy’s looking at Max, and not at him, so Steve goes inside and is relieved Dustin left the door open for him. 

Once Steve is actually in the apartment, the kids have mostly finished poking their heads into all available nooks and crannies to scope it out. Only Dustin and El have seen it before. El becomes sometimes she comes with Hopper, and Dustin because he calls Steve his _soulmate_ and visits sporadically to purr disconcertingly and explain weird interactions with girls he likes in excruciating detail. The apartment feels warm, and Steve’s explaining something to Will about an art exhibit they might as well go to when Billy and Max walk back in.

The room goes silent, which is the opposite of normal, and Steve is annoyed that they can’t all just _pretend_ things are normal and easy.

Lucas, who had his face in the fridge, didn’t hear them come in. He turns around, grinning brightly, “Beers!” he says, and it breaks the silence.

“No!” Steve and Billy say at the same time. Steve feels proud. Billy looks horrified. The kids look back and forth between them before El leans over and whispers something to Will and he nods enthusiastically. 

She’s still looking back and forth between the two of them, thoughtful. “Billy,” Steve says, and Billy moves toward him. “I don’t know if you know El. This is--her. She’s the reason Dustin called that night.”

Billy looks at her. “Uh, hi,” he says after a second. Then, with a little more charm, “Nice to meet you. I’m Billy.”

“Hi,” Eleven says, nodding. She looks at Steve, then back at Billy, kind of pointedly. Will is watching her, and actually _laughs out loud_ when Eleven says, “Love.”

Steve buries his face in his hands, “Oh my _fucking god_ ,” he whines.

Dustin is cracking up, laughing so hard he has to press his face into Max’s shoulder to muffle the sound.

Billy stares at Steve and then stares at Eleven and then shrugs. “Well,” he says finally, “At least you told me before she did.”

“Who wants pizza,” Steve says miserably, like it’s a statement and not a question. Out of spite, he makes Billy call in the order and the kids go pick it up.

~

Steve isn’t like, super proper or anything. He had parties at his house, for fucks sake, but after pizza and soda--zero beers for the children, thank you--he determines that Max and Billy will get the bed and the rest of them will just sleep out in the living room. Steve struggles through blowing up the two air mattresses he has for the boys--they were a Fancy New Thing a few years ago, and his parents bought a lot of them for two people who were never home, and Steve has just slowly pilfered them over the years--and he makes up the couch for Eleven. They stay up too late talking, and Steve makes each of the kids call home and explain where they are before he lets them go to bed.

He’s stretched out on a sleeping bag in the hallway, listening to the sound of all the breathing in the apartment and feeling warm all over, when he hears the creak of footsteps. It’s unexpected, and Steve feels his heart race, sits up too fast and wishes he were closer to a lightswitch, or that he had a flashlight or a bat or--

“It’s me,” Billy says, appearing in Steve’s view from around the corner. Steve exhales loud and with an edge of panic, and Billy drops down on the floor next to him, tugging Steve’s shoulders until Steve’s head is on Billy’s thigh. “Sorry,” Billy says quietly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Steve turns his head and presses his nose into Billy’s hip, keeps his eyes closed for a second while his heartbeat stutters back to normal. “I’m sorry,” Steve says, “That I’m so fucking jumpy all the time.”

“It’s fine. You don’t have to be sorry for that. I’m the--” Billy stops and swallows loudly in the quiet space, “I’m the one who should be sorry for a lot of shit.”

Steve rolls back over so that he can look up at Billy. He can sort of see him, framed in the light from outside. The boys are snoring quietly, or pretending to snore quietly, and Steve knows they’re there, but this feels like it’s just Billy and him. “I forgive you,” Steve says into the dark, and Billy makes a quiet sound Steve can’t really place. “You know that, right?”

Billy leans down and presses a crooked kiss to Steve’s mouth, “Yeah,” he mumbles into Steve’s lips, “But I never said sorry.”

“Well, now you did,” Steve says finally, the words a little clumsy, but he means them. He reaches up and tangles his fingers in Billy’s hair, keeping him close. He doesn’t think either of them have ever said the word sorry this much in their lives, but it’s another one of those things he knows they’re working on. It’s not easy. It isn’t like they’re going to stop fucking up all of the sudden, but they can start apologizing. “It’s gonna be weird if the kids wake up and we’re alone in the hallway,” Steve says. “I should have given the boys the bed and had Max and El sleep on the air mattress.” He feels stupid for it, but he’d kind of wanted Billy and Max to have their own space if they wanted or needed it.

“It was a nice thought,” Billy says, still very quiet. “Scoot over.”

Steve does, and Billy lets him do his octopus thing, lets him plaster himself to Billy’s side and put his head on Billy’s chest and cling. “Did Max forgive you?” he asks.

He feels Billy shrug, “I don’t expect her to,” he says finally. “But it’ll be better with her, I think. It’s been getting better for a while.”

“You were fucked up,” Steve whispers.

“It wasn’t just done to me, Harrington,” Billy says, “I did it, too. I didn’t have to, and I did.”

“You stopped, though.”

Billy shrugs again and Steve tilts his head up, presses a kiss to Billy’s jaw and waits him out. “Not soon enough,” Billy says finally.

Steve can agree with that, so he doesn’t say anything back. He doesn’t tell Billy that it’s ok, because it wasn’t ok then and it isn’t ok now. He forgives him and that’s going to have to be enough. He lifts himself up and kisses Billy, chaste and feather-light--there are _kids_ here, thanks--and then he lies back down. Steve falls asleep quickly. He doesn’t have a single bad dream.

He was right. It’s very weird the next morning when he wakes up to six teenagers peering at him and Billy on the floor of the hallway. Eleven looks at Mike a little smugly. “Love,” she says, grinning at him, all teeth.

“Oh my _fucking god_ ,” Steve whines. And then he makes waffles. Because he’s whipped, is what he is.

~

Mid-March cracks the cold in Chicago right open, bleeding warmth and 55º days that feel like summer over the city for a solid week. Steve basks in the sunlight on his walk to and from the cafe each day. The city seems to wake up from hibernation, shaking itself out. The sidewalks drip with grey, gross liquid, the last remnants of a punishing snow, but even so, Chicago feels fresh and beautiful. Steve hopes the warmth is here to stay, even as he’s annoyed he has to dodge around more and more people on his commute. It takes his focus away from thinking, and he’s doing a _lot_ of thinking.

At some point, he and Billy are going to need to talk about Easter. They’ve been doing so good, though, since the kids came to Chicago to visit, that he doesn’t really want to bring it up. He doesn’t want to shatter whatever they’ve got going on by throwing Hawkins into the mix. He’s being unfair to Billy, who is trying. And to himself, because they’re both getting better at communicating, and he doesn’t think he should keep secrets from Billy if they’re talking about stuff now, which they are. Nancy is proud.

Billy’s got a pretty steady job, one that a friend of Hopper’s gave him, and he’s had it for a little over a month. He’s working on cars, and he seems to like it, and Steve wishes that he could give Billy this future--away from Hawkins--in its entirety, but he can’t. Hawkins may not be home, but there’s stuff for Steve there, stuff he needs to go back to sometimes. He wishes he didn’t feel so fucking guilty about it.

They get home from work at the same time that day, Billy smelling a little like oil, Steve smelling a lot like coffee. They walk up the steps together, silent, but Billy brushes his hand against Steve’s a little bit and smiles a soft hello. Those looks, when Billy smiles like it’s a secret, make Steve feel like he’s floating. He was going to tell him, but when they get home at the same time, sometimes they shower together. Billy smiled that just-for-Steve smile, and Steve thinks--later, he can tell him later. Steve loves the rush he gets when Billy pins him up against the shower wall, tiles cold, water warm, Billy warmer. So he doesn’t tell him yet, because he doesn’t want to ruin that.

He also doesn’t tell Billy the next morning, when Steve’s quiet in bed and Billy says, “Is there somethi--” and Steve shuts him up by clamping a hand over his mouth and crawling on top of Billy. They fuck, and Billy falls back asleep after, looking a little dazed. “Jesus, Harrington, where did that even come from?” he mumbles as Steve rolls out of bed. Billy sort of reaches for him, but Steve slips out the door, pulling sweatpants on as he goes.

Steve is officially distracting him with sex. This is fucking ridiculous.

“I can’t tell him,” Steve hisses into the phone about an hour later while Billy’s still sleeping. “I am distracting him with sex!”

“Ok,” says the person on the other end, “Listen, Nancy is going to be back really soon--”

“Jonathan,” Steve whines, _actually whines_ into the phone.

Jonathan immediately offers his unwavering support for _any_ possible plan of action, except one that involves Steve talking any more about his sex life with Billy. He’s lucky Nancy really is back soon.

“You don’t need to _tell_ him anything,” Nancy says, matter-of-factly, “Babe, can you pass me the--no, the other--yes, thank you,” and Steve waits for her to finish adding whatever to the pot he can hear her stirring. “Sorry, we’re making soup for some people coming over. They’re interested in Jonathan’s photographs,” she sounds so proud. 

“He didn’t say anything. That’s amazing,” Steve says. “Tell him I said that,” he demands when Nancy just murmurs her agreement. He hears Jonathan shout a thank you in the background.

“You two should just talk to each other. I don’t know why you do it through me so much,” she pauses, “You and Jonathan, I mean. He could have just told you--oh, whatever. I don’t care. _Anyway_ ,” Nancy pauses, “You’re going about this wrong. You don’t need to _tell_ Billy anything, you need to _ask him_ if he wants to come, and make sure he knows you’re ok with his answer either way.”

“You’re a perfect golden star of a woman,” Steve says, because she is. 

“I know,” Nancy answers, “Go have a conversation with your boyfriend.”

“Ugh,” Steve says, and Nancy hangs up on him.

Steve jumps nearly out of his skin about twenty minutes later, when Billy comes up behind him. “Shit,” he swears, “Fucking hell, Billy.”

“Sorry,” Billy says, still behind him, “You all right?” 

Steve takes a moment to enjoy how easy it is for Billy to say both of those things, because it hasn’t always been, and it feels good to just--bask in it for a second. Their progress.

Half a minute later though, and Steve’s still standing at the sink with his back to Billy. Is he all right? It’s a fair question. Steve’s coming to terms with the fact that he’s always going to be a little jumpy, but it isn’t like Billy snuck up behind him. He walked like a normal person out of the bedroom and across the kitchen, and Steve still jumped.

“Yeah,” Steve says, “Sorry it’s not--” my usual bullshit, he doesn’t say, it’s new and exciting bullshit. “Listen,” he says, and he turns around finally, looking at Billy. “It’s almost Easter.”

“Yup,” Billy says. He’s dragging his fingers across Steve’s collarbone, which is incredibly distracting. When Steve doesn’t say anything else, Billy glances at him, a little searching. “Is that it?” he adds.

 _Just ask_ , reminds the part of Steve’s brain that sounds like Nancy. “Easter is kind of a big deal for the kids,” he says. He’s hedging. “Like, a big deal.” 

Billy’s starting to look annoyed, “Ok?” he says, “Is there a point to this conversation, Harrington, or is that mouth of yours going to need something to shut it up?” He drops his hand and takes a few steps back, leaning against the table and crossing his arms.

“Ok, fuck you,” Steve says, but without any real heat. Now he’s distracting him with fighting. “I can’t figure out why this is so hard for me to say this. Look I’m--I’m going back to Hawkins for Easter in like, a week and a half.”

There’s a beat of silence, then two, then three. Billy’s face does a weird thing. His mouth tightens and his jaw ticks.

Too late, Steve realizes that he’d told--and not asked. Billy spins and storms away, slams the door to the bedroom so hard that dishes shudder in the sink. “Fuck,” Steve says, scrubs at his face. “Billy,” he calls, walking over to the door. He jiggles the handle, but it’s locked. “Billy come on, open the fucking door.” When there is no answer from inside and the door stays shut, Steve groans and sits down on the floor. He thunks his head against the door. “Come on, Billy,” he says, thunking again. “I meant to ask you to come with me. Not just announce it like that. Open the _fucking_ door!” Steve thinks he’s going to be sitting here all night. He closes his eyes and drops his head into his hands, leans back against the door and prepares to wait.

Nearly a full silent, awful minute passes, and then footsteps. Steve counts one heartbeat, then two, then three. Billy rips the door open so fast Steve almost falls over backwards, has to scrabble for balance before he clambers awkwardly to his feet. Billy walks to the other end of the room so that he’s standing at the window, framed in the street lights coming through. His shoulders are tense. There’s an undercurrent of danger, here, and Steve thinks that this is why he hadn’t wanted to say anything to Billy about the trip. Thinks this is why Nancy told him to ask. Thinks this is why Jonathan had wondered why Steve didn’t just talk to him about it sooner.

“How long did you know?” Billy finally says, tight, and low, and bitter.

“What?”

“How long did you know you were going back to Hawkins in a _week and a half_?”

Steve sits on the edge of the bed and fiddles with the blanket. “I always go back for Easter,” he says. “It matters to Mike and El, I--” he pauses, “I figured out the date with Hopper about a month ago.”

“A fucking month,” Billy says. “So glad you finally deigned to tell me.”

“It wasn’t like that--it isn’t like that,” Steve says, quietly.

Steve doesn’t like to smoke in the house, so Billy almost never does. It’s pointed when he turns around, pulls the pack out of his pocket, shoves a cigarette between his lips. He makes Steve wait, takes his time lighting it up, exhales smoke in Steve’s direction. 

“Yeah?” Billy says, “So what’s it like then, Harrington?” he steps closer. Steve thinks Billy’s eyes betray more than Billy wants them to, he looks a little wounded. Steve runs a hand through his hair as Billy continues, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “What’s it like? Go on, tell me, princess. What’s it like?”

Steve flushes, feels sparks of anger all the way down his spine. Why does Billy have to make everything so fucking hard? This is ridiculous. This is a stupid thing to be fighting about. “I’m going to Hawkins for Easter because it matters to me,” Steve says, working himself up a little bit more, annoyed and frazzled--and a little guilty, too. “And anyway--you know I go home for the holidays, so you could have just asked me if I was going!”

Another silence, Billy making Steve wait.

“Home,” Billy finally spits, taking a long drag off the cigarette, flicking ashes onto the floor. It’s a fucking fire hazard. Billy looks wild and dangerous, he grins with dark eyes and takes another drag. “You go _home_ for the holidays, how cute, Harrington. Really just precious, honestly.”

It is at that moment that Steve understands. It’s another one of those things that Steve doesn’t understand until he does, and it just smacks into him like a fucking freight train. “Billy--” he starts, and then stops, because he doesn’t have words and every single one of Billy’s hackles is up, like they haven’t made any progress since high school, like Billy is thinking about running Steve off the road or maybe just running him over. “I--” he tries again, but stops, because he doesn’t have the language for this.

“You still got nothing, Harrington?” Billy’s nearly laughing, and Steve’s feelings aren’t hurt, but he’s _hurting_ because this one, this one is totally on him. He did this and he did it to Billy, because he’s a big fucking baby and couldn’t just talk about shit like an adult.

“Really are a man of few words I see. Nice. I like that in a guy.” Billy takes another shaky pull from his cigarette. “Well have fun at _home_ ,” he says. Then yells: “WOO!” and throws his head back. It’s so loud that Steve jumps. “Home for the _holidays_ , god damn, what a nice little Easter miracle.” Billy’s laughing again, just this side of out of control. Steve can see every one of his jagged edges. Billy puts the cigarette out on the window ledge, and Steve flinches when he does it, imagines fire burning them both to the ground.

“Don’t wait up,” Billy sneers. He walks out of the bedroom then, and out of the apartment. He doesn’t stop for a jacket. It’s that part, more than anything, that drives home the point that Steve fucked up.

~

Steve really tries not to wait up. He’s still mad and guilty, and it doesn’t make him feel like talking. He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling and fully intends to pretend he’s asleep when Billy finally comes back. He does that for one night, then two. Three days pass without a word from Billy, and Steve is just trying to act like everything is normal. He goes to a show with some friends and on the second night he goes out for drinks with some people after a gruelling day at the cafe. When people ask him about Billy, who they know sort of through Steve, Steve smiles and says Billy’s great, thanks, I’ll let him know you asked after him.

On day four, in a kind of nervous, desperate panic, he calls Max, who says, “Uh,” like, forty-five times while Steve tries to sound Calm and Rational and Adult. “I’ll--let you know if I hear from him?” she says, “But listen, like, no offense, Steve. Billy and me--we’re not like you and Dustin or Nancy and Mike. He’s not going to call me because he needs something to ground him. We’re--fine. We’re not--we aren’t that, man.”

Steve knows that, but he’d just kind of hoped. “Thanks, Max,” he says. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You didn’t bother,” she says. “But listen, maybe when you call about Billy--call one of the boys or El. They’ll get me.” She’s quiet for a second, “I don’t think you should call the house.”

Steve swallows hard, “Yeah, ok,” he says. “Sorry. Thanks. Sorry.”

“I’ll talk to you later. Let me know if--” she stops, “When. Let me know when he gets home.”

Steve hangs up, and thinks about the word home, and the things it means to different people, and wonders how he could have tossed it around so carelessly in front of Billy when even Max knows what the word means, when it’s such a simple fucking word in Billy’s language.

On day five, Steve looks in the mirror and showers and shaves and starts thinking about what he’s going to do if Billy never comes back.


	2. II

Steve tends to think of his past with Billy as a series of major moments. It’s not an accurate perception of how the last few months of high school actually went down, but it helps him to catalog the details that way.

Day six, and Steve’s crawled out the tiny window in the living room to perch on the fire escape. It’s usually where Billy goes when he wants a moment alone without leaving, so Steve isn’t out here much. It’s not pretty to look at, just a solid wall of brick about five feet from Steve’s nose and his sock covered feet dangling over tiny alley below. Steve’s got a growing pile of cigarette butts in the ashtray that must also be Billy’s, and he’s thinking he doesn’t smoke this much on a normal week, and he’s also thinking that there is so much shit around his apartment now that’s actually _Billy’s shit_ , and not the lingering trauma kind of shit, but the kind of clutter that fills a space and makes it homey. The kind of clutter that if Billy doesn’t come back is going to give _Steve_ some _additional_ lingering trauma, like he doesn’t have enough. He feels a little sick looking at the stupid ashtray, so he lights another cigarette.

The weather in Chicago has gotten colder over the course of the day, but not enough for snow, Instead, it pours an ugly, solid sheet of raindrops that sting with cold when Steve holds his hand out to catch a few. Behind him, the apartment is already dark, the last fingers of sunlight have already receded. His fingers and toes are numb. He’s been out here for a while, but isn’t ready to go back in. Besides, he’d have to walk through the shadows to get to the light switches.

Steve leans his head back against the wall and breathes out smoke. He tried yesterday to think about what he’d do if Billy never came back, and he’s spent most of the hours, minutes, seconds since then thinking about how to not throw up all over the place. He isn’t sure when Billy became so integral, but he did, so Steve’s chain smoking out on the fire escape. What else is he gonna do?

Major moments isn’t an accurate way to conceptualize their orbit around each other for all these years, and the big ones: the fight, of course, and the day Billy was dragged out of the school in handcuffs don’t paint enough of a picture to shade in all the reasons that Steve stood there in the jail that day and took Billy home with him instead of leaving. There were long--endless then--days between the fight and Billy’s last day of school. Days where Billy and Steve made no eye contact in the hallway. Days where they were always the last two at basketball practice, standing under the shelter of the roof outside the gym door, both hiding from something. Days where, in the showers, Steve had felt less afraid of Billy, and they had--not _talked_ or anything, but co-existed, at least. They’d breathed the same air. Days where Billy must have watched Steve’s face heal in increments, even as the rest of Steve was falling a little bit apart. 

It’s easier, though, to think of the major interactions. The fight, then the day with the microscope, then the day in the police station. There’s too much honesty stashed between the lines that tell the rest of their story. Steve isn’t ready to go there. Billy had come back into his life when Steve picked him up from the police station and that feels ok for a timeline. Steve--obviously, he thinks bitterly--isn’t _better_ , but three years out he’s not--what he was those last few months of high school. He doesn’t want to remember that person who sort of knew a different Billy. Neither of them are that, anymore. He wants nothing to do with it.

Still, on the fire escape, he remembers the way they’d never managed to really go their separate ways, not while they were both still trapped in Hawkins.

There had been a week in March—it must have been almost three years ago around this week, actually, when Steve’s parents had been in town. Steve’s parents hadn’t been home often, and when they were his mother had liked to—Steve thinks of it as playing house—sit down and have Family Dinner. It was nice, though, to sit around the table. Those nights they were home were always some of his favorites, but that night had been weird.

He’d helped his mom in the kitchen, let her fuss with his hair and brush fuzz off his shoulders as he chopped tomatoes for a sauce. “You’re growing up right in front of me,” she’d said, kind of soft and sad, one hand cupping his cheek. Steve had thought about the empty house he’d come back to _after_ and had hugged her, face in her neck, eyes closed. “Oh,” his mother had said, soft and surprised, but she’d hugged him back for a long time, hadn’t pulled away until he did. If his eyes were wet, she hadn’t said anything, just-- “Make sure you cut those tomatoes evenly, baby, or they won’t cook evenly in the sauce,” and she hadn’t called him baby much in a long time, but it had been--nice. Playing house, maybe, but he could have lived in that moment for the rest of his life.

It was a Wednesday night, and Steve _had_ been planning to go out, but he’d cancelled, relieved instead to sit around the table while his father talked business and his mother looked at him with all that warmth. They asked a lot of questions about school. It was always earnest when they did that. They did genuinely want to know about school; they were never home long enough to figure out how it was going for themselves. His dad had been talking about skill-building, a conversation that Steve now knows was intended to prepare him for the gap year conversation, but at the time he’d just thought it was another half-hearted attempt at parenting. They’d never really asked him about his face. They’d come home after it had started healing and had gone with his story about a basketball accident.

When the conversation lulled and Steve was twirling spaghetti around his fork with only a little bit of interest, his mother had leaned forward conspiratorially over her plate and looked at Steve’s father. “Such a shame,” she’d said in the voice she used when she was trying to sound sympathetic, but was really filled with a sort of glee around some small town gossip she’d collected, “About Neil Hargrove’s boy.”

Steve hadn’t looked up exactly, but he’d held very still and listened.

“The father is a nice man,” she’d continued, “I’ve met him a few times. I saw his wife Susan today at the store while I was picking up some things for dinner, and she of course didn’t _say_ that the boy—Bradley?—is a terror, but I’ve seen him around town and she looked so tired doing the shopping, you can just tell.”

“Billy,” Steve had said to his spaghetti. His parents had both turned and blinked at him. “Billy—that’s his name. Not Bradley.” More blank stares and blinking. “We go to school together.”

“Well I certainly hope you’re doing better in school than he is,” his father had said. “He rides around town in that impractical car…”

There had been more, Steve thinks, said about the car and Billy’s grades, and Susan’s struggle with a step son so _difficult_ , but he mostly remembers the tone. The way that his parents had talked about Billy that night, joking and smug. _Not our boy_ , they seemed to be saying, over and over again.

After dinner, Steve had excused himself up to bed while his parents wrapped up for the night. He had slid under his blankets in too many layers and left all the lights on. In those days, he never could turn them off and so he slept with every single one on. Across the room from his bed he could see his face framed in the mirror. He remembers thinking he looked tired. He’d poked his long-since healed eye where it used to be black and thought that if his face was healed, he should be feeling better.

He remembers the sounds of his parents getting ready for bed, wandering around and making the house creak in a way that had put Steve on edge. He remembers thinking that they were so _certain_ about Billy, a kid in high school pronounced doomed by his parents over spaghetti while they played house with their son, whose future they had also felt they had known.

They had been wrong about Steve. He hopes, swinging his legs on the fire escape, that they are wrong about Billy too.

“Where the fuck did you go?” he asks the empty alley, lighting another cigarette and drawing his knees to his chest. A chill has settled into the air. He wishes he’d thought to bring out a heavier jacket, but crawling back through the window seems like too much effort now. Steve can’t bear the thought of going back inside to an apartment so full of Billy when it’s so empty of him, too. “Fuck,” Steve says.

Inside, the phone rings. Steve abandons any premise of staying outside. He scrambles to get back through the window, slides a little on the rain-slick metal and sends the ashtray and all his cigarette butts skittering over the edge. They fall down, down, down, down and shatter. Frozen for a heartbeat, he peers over the edge and looks at the shards and the steady, soaking rain. The phone rings again, and he pushes himself through the window, leaps across the hallway, snatches it to his ear.

“Hello?” he says, breathless, hopeful.

“Mr. Harrington?”

“Yes?” he says, breathless, terrified.

“I’m calling about a recent donation you made to…”

Steve slams the phone down into its cradle, sinks to the floor of his apartment, and does the kind of heaving sobbing that comes, without tears, from deep in your belly for several minutes, his chin to his chest and his hands in his hair.

He’s embarrassed about it almost as soon as it stops, finds himself glancing at the window like he’s worried his neighbors saw. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t like—Billy shouldn’t be—Steve should be fine without—but every time he starts the thought, he can’t see it through to the end. 

He should be able to move on, he guesses, that’s how that thought ends. It probably, judging from how he’s handling this, won’t be any time soon. But that’s fine. He’ll be fine he can—he can do this. He will wake up in the morning and he will keep going to his job and he will go back home for Easter in a little under four days, and it’s going to be fine. That’s what Steve tells himself as he stands up, trying to pat his hair back down into place and rubbing his cheeks. His eyes feel achy and his throat hurts. He adjusts his shirt, which had ridden up.

He jumps _out of his skin_ when the phone rings again.

He almost doesn’t answer it, self preservation warring with the hot lump of dread in his gut. He almost doesn’t answer it, except maybe--

“Hello,” he says, toneless, empty.

“Oh, Steve,” says Nancy’s voice from too far away, so gentle and familiar that Steve thinks he’ll shatter from it. “What’s happened?”

Steve wants to tell her to drop everything, to plead that she come to Chicago so his bed doesn’t feel so empty, to set the apartment on fire and show up on her doorstep, dripping from the rain, and make her let him stay. Steve wants to never see another living soul again. He can’t stand being alone. “It’s nothing,” he says, hollow and tired. “He’s going to come back. Why did you call?”

It’s a rude question to be asking in a rude tone, but she takes it in stride. “Max, actually,” she says, which surprises him because he’d been expecting El, or maybe Dustin, whose calls Steve has been ducking since day three. “She said you’d called the house and weren’t sure what was going on, and I just thought…I wanted to give you space, but it’s been another two days and I just--” Nancy trails off, “I thought I wouldn’t like to be alone, so I didn’t want you to feel like you were.”

And Nancy just kind of talks to him for a while. It’s background noise, chatter, and Steve sinks back down onto the floor and sits in his hallway, his head tipped back against the wall, just listening to her. She tells him story after story about college, and her friends, about Jonathan’s photographs, and something funny about Mike she doesn’t think he’s heard yet. Nancy talks to him as his stomach untangles itself, and it’s long enough that he’s stopped feeling embarrassed, but hasn’t quite let go of sad. “Nance,” he interrupts after a while, “I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

There’s a long moment where he listens to her breathing. He can picture her, sitting in her bed with the bottoms of her feet pressed together, chewing on her lip and making a face at Jonathan about him. He pictures Jonathan there because that’s how Nancy is happiest. These days, Steve always pictures the people he loves at their happiest. “Of course,” she says, her voice still so gentle that it makes him feel better and even more embarrassed at what a fucking mess he is all at once.

“Love you,” he says, and she says it back, and waits for him to hang up first.

He stands up to hang up the phone and then crosses the living room to shut the window. When he pokes his head out, someone has swept up the shards of the ashtray he shattered before. His neighbors, probably, still waiting for just the right moment to call the cops. Outside, the air has gotten even colder, and Steve pulls his head back in and slams the window shut. He turns on all the lights. He crawls into bed.

He’d told Billy he loved him. He loves Billy. It isn’t, Steve has spent the last six days realizing, enough to love someone. You have to learn them too. He’d been so caught up in his own-- _new and exciting bullshit_ his brain supplies—that he hadn’t really thought about the parts of it that mattered to Billy. Steve had been thinking of himself, as well, when he’d been afraid to tell Billy about going back to Hawkins. Steve wants a do-over. Steve wants to have never gone to the station to pick Billy up that day. Steve wants, at once, for everything to be different and for nothing to have changed. _That doesn’t make any sense_ chides the part of his brain that sounds--fucking hell, he heaves another desperate sob, just for a second--the part of his brain that sounds like Billy.

Really, most of all, he thinks as he tosses and turns, kicks the covers on and off, reaches for Billy’s pillow and then throws it away, what he really fucking wants is for Billy to just--just come the fuck home.

Another day down. Infinity more to go, he thinks as his exhausted brain gives up and finally lets him fall asleep.

~

The phone rings early the next morning.

Despite all his promises and good intentions of a strong tomorrow, he’s been ignoring his alarm clock for twenty minutes. He doesn’t really want to answer the phone and deal with the world. Nancy had been a soothing surprise, but the emotional rollercoaster of a ringing phone the night before has left him with puffy eyes and he doesn’t really want to answer the phone and experience it all again.

He can tell he’s been crying on and off just by how raw his face feels, but he’ll need to look in a mirror to assess the damage. This is humiliating. He doesn’t want to get out of bed and he doesn’t want to answer the phone. The phone _doesn’t get the message_. 

It rings. 

Maybe he’s already late for work. He squints as his clock, wondering if he missed daylight savings time or something and that the ringing is work calling to ask where the fuck he is. 

It rings, and rings, and rings.

Steve finally drags himself out of bed and down the hallway. “Hello?” he says, sleepy and grumpy. A little scared.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” says a kind of familiar voice on the other end of the line.

“This is a phone call?” Steve says, because it’s early and he’s tired and his face aches and he doesn’t understand the joke.

“Come to my precinct and pick up your boy, Harrington,” says the voice, and Steve says, “Oh,” out loud before he can stop himself. He can’t remember her name--the nice officer who’d walked into the coffee shop in November. In his head, whenever he thinks about her, he calls her _Cop B_ because that’s what Billy calls her.

“Ok,” he says, and hangs up the phone. He blinks at it for a second, his stomach doing something tight and weird. He feels a little dazed. He picks up the phone again because--well, he can’t go to work. It’s been long enough since the last time he called out that they don’t give him any trouble. He doesn’t say anything about picking anyone up from jail this time. It takes too much energy to explain and his brain is currently occupied with giving clear instructions to the rest of his body. _One foot in front of the other_ it coaches him, _zip your jeans_. It’s cold again, has been on and off, which Steve has resolutely not been thinking about in regards to Billy, but he still pulls on a jacket.

The walk to the station feels endless, which he knows is stupid, but it’s probably because he has to readjust every few feet and remind his legs how walking works. Honestly, the station is just as close as it had been the first time, but every second of the fifteen minute walks is a thousand years. Steve wonders what he’s going to find. What he’s going to do. He wishes he had time to call Nancy. He’s spent the last week wondering if Billy’s dead in a gutter and now he’s alive in a jail. Steve has a lot of questions, but there’s a big, glaring one that he can’t wrap his head around. He wishes he had time to call _literally anyone_ because he’s not sure he trusts his brain to deal with it. 

It slams around inside his skull, makes his head ache and his stomach twist: what is he going to do if Billy’s been fucking other people? 

Steve wants to believe Billy wouldn’t, but no matter how hard he tries the whole walk over, he can’t rule it out.

Suddenly, he’s inside and saying his name out loud, and Cop B is shaking her head with something like a smile. She is as warm and familiar looking as she had been the day she’d walked into the cafe. Gruff like Hopper, but she shakes his hand and holds his gaze. He thinks she might know he’s not doing so hot himself. “Wait here, Mr. Harrington,” she says easily, “Steve,” he corrects absently, and there is no one there to tell her--snide and smug--that she should call him princess. The thought makes him feel a little light headed so he just--he stands there. There are posters up for yard sales on the bulletin board this time. Steve reads them while he waits for Cop B--Officer Abaroa, she’d said when he walked in--to collect Billy from the back. He wonders if she had to pull any magic cop strings, but when he asks about bail while he’s waiting, bored of the posters, he gets told it’s just a holding thing and both he and Billy will be sent on their way.

He feels fidgety, bouncing on his heels and drumming his fingers against his thighs. The gate opens and Steve turns around, exhales very, very slowly. Looks at Billy. Assesses the damage. There’s a little fading bruising around Billy’s temple, and his lip is split again, but otherwise the damage isn’t actually bad.

Steve stares at Billy and Billy stares back, and Officer Abaroa looks back and forth between the two of them, a little awkward. Steve wonders if anyone has ever had deja-vu and heartbreak listed as their cause of death. He’s probably going to be the first. Officer Abaroa coughs awkwardly. “Are you boys...all set?” she asks. 

Billy looks at him for a second like he’s going to _say_ something out _loud_ , but Steve shakes his head, tightly. He doesn’t want to do this here, if they’re going to do anything at all. He can’t shatter in front of strangers. Billy gets his stuff back while Steve thanks Officer Abaroa like, probably six times, and does not touch or look at Billy again until they’re out on the sidewalk, and they’re both kind of shivering. Steve’s angry and hurt. He can feel all this emotion thrumming just below his skin, but he’s relieved too, and it’s confusing. He wants to scream and shout and freak out, but he’s trying to be better. He wants, very much, to be better. He doesn’t really want everything to end in a screaming match on the sidewalk, never wants to put Billy in a position to say _back off_ ever again. He’s not going to do that, but it’s hard, because Billy is walking next to him down the street and Steve’s so relieved he could die from that, too.

Steve takes a moment once they’re around the corner to stop walking because his legs feel like they aren’t sure they’re going to keep working. He leans against the sturdy bricks of a building, presses his arm against it and pushes his face into the crook of his elbow, his back to Billy. He’s leaning into the brick wall like he’s crumbling, and he just needs a fucking minute, ok, fuck. He doesn’t say any of this out loud because he’s really focused on his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. He wishes he had a cigarette, but his pack is still on the fire escape. A century passes. Finally, he turns around and really looks at Billy. 

Steve wants to ask a lot of questions, but Billy is just standing there. He’s kind of drawn into himself, shoulders hunched. He’s looking at Steve through his eyelashes, and his stance is so in conflict with his expression--at once defensive and withdrawn, that Steve feels a little better. He isn’t the only one who doesn’t know what to do with his feelings. At least Billy isn’t laughing.

It doesn’t make it any easier to start talking, but Steve needs to ask the question that’s bouncing around inside his brain, has been since the walk over. “I don’t--” Steve starts. He stops abruptly and digs around in the pocket of his jeans. He holds the keys to his apartment out to Billy, his movements a little rigid, but certain. Steve works really hard to make sure their fingers don’t touch. Billy closes his hand around the keys and looks confused, but he doesn’t speak. Steve is grateful for that silence. It gives him a little more courage. 

“I want you to go home,” Steve says, “Whatever answer you give to this question. It’s just--” he stops again, and Billy doesn’t say anything, and Steve wishes he could just _talk_ to Billy, wishes they spoke the same fucking language. “I need to ask you something and--and I’m maybe going to need to--to not come home with you, like right away. Depending on your answer, but I just. I really want you to go home either way. Ok?”

Billy’s gone from looking nervous, to confused, to kind of scared at the corners of his mouth. He nods and tries to catch Steve’s gaze. Billy’s searching Steve’s face. Steve feels like Billy’s eyes are setting him on fire. 

Steve swallows hard around a lump in his throat. “I feel like a fucking teenage girl,” he mumbles, “But did you--did you--” _fuck,_ why is this so _fucking hard_ , “Did you sleep with someone else?”

“No.” Billy’s answer is immediate and confident and his voice cracks on it, just a bit.

“Are you lying?”

“Harrington--” Billy stops, fidgets, “Steve. I wouldn’t lie about--that.”

Steve feels like he can breathe again, he looks at Billy for a little longer. “Are you hurt?” he asks, “More than the, y’know,” Steve motions at his own face. 

“No,” Billy says again. “No,” he repeats, softer. “Do you have a cigarette?”

And Steve doesn’t, but they’re outside a bodega, so he buys Billy a pack, and Billy says thank you, and that’s the only conversation they have until they’re home, and Billy’s showered, and Steve is the one sitting in the apartment smoking cigarette after cigarette while he waits.

He doesn’t need to call Nancy for this conversation and he thinks she would be proud.

Billy comes out of the shower with wet hair that curls against his neck. He’s wearing a pair of Steve’s sweatpants and a white t-shirt. The neck shows more of his chest than Steve thinks is called for, and he can’t help the way he stares. Billy looks thinner, and Steve wonders how much he’s smoked and how much he’s eaten since he walked out of the apartment. Steve feels worry gnawing at him for a second, but as he looks, he reminds himself that Billy is also a grown up. That they can’t--be like this and make it work.

Billy stops moving and looks up at Steve. It’s nothing like he’d looked at him seven days ago. Billy is slow, fluid movements, like he’s wary of what Steve will do next, like he doesn’t want to make Steve jump. He’s nearly still, nothing sudden, rigid, or chaotic about his motions. Instead he is predictable, in orbit around Steve, waiting. 

Steve watches Billy glance between the cigarette in Steve’s fingers and the ashtray full of butts. He notices the expression on Billy’s face change a little. Steve taps his cigarette and looks away from Billy, watches the ashes fall into the ashtray.

Billy sits down at the table across from Steve. “Harrington--”

“Me first,” Steve says. Billy snaps his mouth shut. “I am--not great--at a fucking lot of things, apparently. One of them is dealing with my shit. One of them is navigating your shit. I handled that badly, the other day. I didn’t mean to keep it a secret or to hide it from you and I--” he stops, because he wants to start with the apology, but it’s hard, “And I am sorry, because I fucking hurt you with my lack of ability to talk about shit, and that--” Steve has to stop for breath again, “Billy that’s the last thing I want to do.” 

Billy nods and scrubs at his damp hair, “Ok and--”

“No wait,” Steve says. “I need to--say all the stuff, first. The second thing is, we can’t do this.” He stops to breathe again and Billy’s face goes absolutely white.

Steve could honestly fucking laugh at how stupidly bad at talking he still is, because that isn’t what he _meant_ , but he can’t go two fucking seconds without putting his foot in his mouth. “No, jesus, fuck, sorry. I mean, we can’t fight like that. We both have stuff and we’re going to need to figure out how to talk about it. You can’t just leave after a fight for a week and I can’t just work myself into a fucking panic and then be an asshole. We can’t do _that_ anymore.”

“Ok,” Billy says, his eyes had shot open when Steve swore. “That’s fair. You’re right.”

Steve leans forward, waiting. “Billy,” he says quietly, insistent. 

Billy looks up at him and holds Steve’s gaze, “I’m sorry,” he says. He never looks away.

Steve exhales smoke, “I forgive you,” he says, because he means it and because it’s different from _it’s ok_ , which it isn’t. “And you should know that I’m still going to Hawkins for Easter, because it’s important to me. And I want you to come, but only if you want to, because you’re important to me. And if you don’t want to that’s all good. I’ll be back here--home--on that Monday night. Ok?”

Billy nods, “Ok,” he says, then, “Can we take the bus?”

Something shatters then, Steve feels it in the air, but it’s in a good way.

He groans and drops his head onto the table, “You fucking planned that,” he mumbles into the wood. “All this fucking drama and heartache so that I’d be willing to take the bus again.”

He hears Billy stand up, feels shower-warmed fingertips tugging at the hair at the nape of his neck. “I didn’t,” Billy says softly. “But I hate airplanes.”

“You’re so lucky I--” _love you_ , says Steve’s brain, which is so true and real and serious and painful, too, but he’s in the middle of telling a joke to give Billy a hard time, and this isn’t--he’s never going to use this as a joke. It isn’t something he’s ever going to give Billy a hard time about. “You’re lucky I have a friend like Nancy who will pick us up from _practically Chicago_.”

“The bus station isn’t that far away from Hawkins,” Billy says, with an eyeroll. “You love hyperbole. You’re too dramatic.”

“No,” Steve grumbles, lifting his forehead off the counter. “That’s the stupidest thing anyone has _ever_ said in response to a very reasonable disdain for the worst form of transportation _ever_ a bu--” he stops, blinks. Billy laughs himself hoarse. “Fuck,” Steve says. “I’m going to throw myself down all eight million of those stairs, now,” and Billy laughs even harder.

~

The night before they leave for Hawkins, Steve wakes up with the kind of sudden clarity that means there was a loud sound, but the apartment around him is silent. There’s a creeping sort of terror at the base of his spine, like there always is when something goes bump in the night, but he counts backwards from ten and then reaches for Billy.

“Mmmrgh,” Billy says, eloquently, when Steve’s hand lands on his face in the dark.

“Sorry,” Steve whispers, “I heard something and it woke me up.” Which--in all fairness, Steve’s only _pretty sure_ he heard something because he doesn’t actually remember hearing it, but that sounds convoluted even in Steve’s brain, so he’s definitely not going to try and say it out loud.

“Mmmph,” Billy says against Steve’s palm. Steve is starting to see better in the dim light coming in front the window and he watches Billy’s eyes open between Steve’s fingers. 

They’re each lying on their own pillow, facing each other. Billy reaches up to wrap his fingers around Steve’s wrist, tugs. “Get your hand off my face,” he grumbles, but he doesn’t let go of Steve’s wrist, just sort of rubs his thumb against Steve’s pulse. Steve feels the terror recede with each heartbeat, and he relaxes into the bed. There are no other sounds in the apartment. There is nothing but Billy breathing-- _grumbling_ , actually--and Steve shifting a little restlessly under the covers. There is no one--no _thing_ here--but the two of them.

“Billy,” Steve says.

“What do you _want_ , Harrington,” Billy snaps, but he shuffles a little bit closer. The clock behind Billy’s head reads 2:15, and he might be playing annoyed, but Steve knows they’ve both woken each other up at all hours of the night too many times for him to really be angry.

Steve grins, delights in the way Billy’s eyes go wide when he says, “I was thinking I want to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Billy answers, sitting up a little in bed.

Steve laughs, “Wide awake now, aren’t you?” he teases, but he’d meant it. He doesn’t know what woke him up, but now that he’s awake--it’s all he wants. They haven’t--been together, like that, since Billy got back. There’s been a lot of kissing, but Steve’s focusing on honesty and good communication, so he’d said--no. He’s felt a little bruised the last few days, wrung out from stress and anger and being sad, and he hadn’t wanted to--hadn’t been ready to--and Billy had been patient, and hadn’t gotten angry or hurt, hadn’t misunderstood where Steve was coming from, and that’s how Steve had known they were on the right track. 

It’s 2:17 in the morning, though, and Steve is fucking ready now. His brain laughs at him, fucking ready, great pun, but it stops when Billy closes the distance between them, hovers over Steve for a second, grinning, and then leans down to kiss him.

Steve’s got a hand in Billy’s hair, drags his other down Billy’s side, “Hi,” he mumbles into Billy’s mouth.

“Do you ever stop talking?” Billy asks. 

“Make me,” Steve says with no heat at all and arches up underneath Billy when he kisses him again, “Fuck,” Steve mumbles, and he feels, more than hears, Billy’s laugh. “Ok, off, off,” Steve says, shoving at Billy’s shoulders. Billy falls back easily, lands on his back and looks up as Steve leans over him to root around in the bedside table.

With Steve leaning over him, Billy wriggles. When Steve’s sat back, holding the bottle of lube in his left hand, Billy’s holding the shorts he was sleeping in on one finger and grinning wickedly. Steve rolls his eyes when Billy throws them dramatically across the bedroom, “You are ridiculous,” Steve mumbles, lifting his hips so that Billy can pulls Steve’s briefs off too. 

Billy kisses him, “It’s one of those things you love about me,” he says. Steve’s heart is thundering in his chest, because it’s so fucking true. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, and Billy grins and flops back against the pillows.

“C’mere,” Billy says, and Steve does. He slips between Billy’s open knees and runs his hand down Billy’s chest and stomach, feels Billy’s muscles tense underneath his fingertips. Steve wraps a hand around Billy’s cock and the noise Billy makes, the way Billy pushes into his hand, makes him feel drunk.

“Fuck,” Steve says, and loves the way Billy laughs again.

“That’s the idea, Harrington,” Billy says through a heavy breath.

Steve leans down and kisses him, slow and soft, and loves that Billy goes with it, loves the way Billy’s hand comes up and his fingers rub at the nape of Steve’s neck. Steve pops the cap on the lube, breaks the kiss and watches Billy’s eyes go dark as he sits back and spreads it over his fingers. “Come on, Harrington,” Billy says, spreading his legs wider, “Come on, come on.”

The noise Billy makes when Steve slides the first finger inside him makes Steve feel like he’s coming apart at the seams. Steve takes his time with Billy like this, watching Billy’s open mouth and flushed cheeks in the dim light of their bedroom. He works him open slowly, one finger, then two, then three, until Billy’s arching up off the bed, “Come _on_ ,” Billy pleads, “Harrington, come on, come on.”

Steve doesn’t, not right away, he fucks Billy with his fingers, plants open mouthed kisses up Billy’s jaw. “Steve,” Billy breathes, “ _Please_.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “Yeah ok,” and he kisses Billy as he pulls his hand back to wrap around his own cock. “Fuck,” Steve says, a little loud, which has always surprised him about him and Billy. If anyone had asked him--not that anyone’s asking--which one of them he thought would be loud, he’d have said Billy. But it’s Steve who’s loud during sex, Billy is all desperate breathing and murmurs that are just for Steve. Steve would be lying if he said the intimacy of that didn’t do it for him.

Billy exhales as Steve pushes inside him, and Steve almost doesn’t hear him, he’s too busy feeling everything. There is nothing like _this_ in all the other ways they move together in a given day. This, this is everything. Steve can never forget what it means that Billy trusts him with his body, which had been hurt in more ways than one. He presses a hot, open mouthed kiss to Billy’s jaw and fucks him slowly.

Billy pushes his head back against the pillow, pulls Steve closer, “Harder,” he says against Steve’s ear, “Come on, Harrington.”

Steve thinks that he’s never going to be able to say no to Billy. He’ll give him what he wants, every time. Steve comes with his face pressed into Billy’s neck, moaning loud enough the neighbors must hear. Billy comes apart in Steve’s hand, and it’s quiet, and beautiful, and just for Steve.

~

Indiana is not on the same page as Chicago, and it feels like it has never been warm here, ever. He and a nervous, fidgety Billy had left Chicago in the dark, early, empty morning. Alone on the platform in Chicago, Billy had pressed shaking hands against Steve’s chest, and stood with his face tucked against Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s arms around his waist, until the rumble of the bus had warned them people might be watching. They had talked quietly the whole ride from Chicago, Billy hiding his nerves about being back in Hawkins behind a lot of empty posturing that grated on Steve’s nerves. Then again, Billy--as far as he knows--has been back to Hawkins three times in the last three years, including this one. The bus rumbles back into the station that is so far from Hawkins that Steve is already annoyed by the ride, but he knows that two of those times--this one included--have been because of him. He knows at least one of those times--and this one isn’t over yet--have left Billy hurting in more ways than one. So it isn’t fair for him to be annoyed, he knows, and so he doesn’t act annoyed. He’s there for Billy, however Billy needs him.

Frost crunches cold beneath the tires of the bus when it pulls into the station at 8:24am. It is the Saturday before Easter, because Mike had insisted they get there early, in case there were errands to run and chores to get done. Standing at the bus stop, Steve feels an echo of the days after Christmas, only now there’s not the relief of knowing they’re leaving. There’s just the weight of Hawkins pressing in on them, and Billy’s own additional weight of knowing what he’s going back to. This time is going to be fucking different, Steve is going to make sure of it. Right now, though the sun is fucking blinding for all that it’s also useless against the cold. Steve wants his sunglasses. Steve wants to go back to Chicago. Steve wants Billy to stop standing so far away from him, looking impossibly cool and distant as he leans against a different pole. What Steve wants, actually, is to hold Billy’s hand. He doesn’t understand why they’ve run out of conversation and Nancy is twenty minutes late. Steve is freezing and nervous, and he can’t stop staring at Billy. Also, he is pretty sure that he’s going to die of _hypothermia_.

“I’m so sorry!” Nancy yells from her open window when she finally pulls up. “I’m so sorry! I got lost and it took me forever to get back to the main road.” Even though Steve and Billy are about to get into the car, she still jumps out of it, already reaching for them both. She hugs Billy first. Steve isn’t jealous, exactly, but when she lets go there’s something a little less tense about the way Billy’s carrying his shoulders. Steve, still with more distance between him and Billy then he’d like, accepts Nancy’s kiss on the cheek. “I should have just had the kids come get you,” she adds, opening the driver’s side door back up. 

“Can I drive?”

Steve’s head shoots up from where he’d been dropping his bag into the backseat. Billy’s looking at Nancy though, not at him.

“Yeah,” Nancy says, “Of course, Billy. Here.” 

Billy catches the keys she throws him, then slides into the driver’s seat. Nancy drops into the passenger seat. “Wait,” Steve says, “How come I--”

“Shut up, Harrington,” Billy says, and Steve does, sliding into the back seat with a put upon sigh. Nancy turns around and smiles at him, then fiddles with the heat.

“Are we old?” Steve asks after a minute, “You just said you should’ve sent the kids to come get us. Like we’re all old. Didn’t we used to be the teenagers doing the teenager stuff?”

Nancy shrugs,“I don’t think we’re old,” she says.

“Nope. We’re ancient,” Steve argues.

Billy’s been quiet since he told Steve to shut up, and Steve glances at Nancy for a second before he leans forward in the seat and curls his fingers around Billy’s shoulder. He squeezes, and Billy glances at him in the rearview mirror. Steve tries to say, _I know this is hard for you, please don’t kill us with this car_ with his eyes in the split second Billy holds his gaze before he cuts his eyes back to the road.

“Don’t sulk,” Nancy says when Steve flops back against the seat, a little stung, and looks out the window. “Not everything is about you, Steve-o,” and she’s gentle about it, and also right. “God it’s cold,” she adds a few minutes later, when they’ve settled in for the drive. “You just missed a kind of crazy snow shower, actually. I think there’s going to be more. It just won’t warm up around here this year.” She’s cranking the heat and Steve thinks that he likes the color of her nails. “Jonathan and I flew in two nights ago because his mom wanted him in town, and it’s been so cold.”

Billy doesn’t really talk much at all for the drive, but Steve and Nancy talk about the weather a little bit, exchange updates on what they know about the crazy teenagers. Twice, Billy interjects to add something about Max, or correct something he heard from her. Steve watches him carefully, but Billy doesn’t speed _much_ more than a normal person would, and he only takes a corner fast enough to make Nancy squeak once.

Then they’re in Hawkins and Billy’s mouth is a tight line. Steve and Nancy chatter like they’re the only two in the car. Steve wonders if he should have encouraged Billy to stay home, then feels ungenerous. Hawkins is easier for Steve with Billy here, and Billy is doing this for him, but that doesn’t make Hawkins any easier for Billy. Steve bites at his lip, and when the Byers’s house comes into view, he curls his fingers around Billy’s shoulders again, squeezes, and this time doesn’t let go until they’ve parked.

Still, when he opens the door of the car and the sounds of a warm, chaotic house spill out through cracked windows and an open front door, he can’t help but exhale in relief. Nancy glances at him and Billy, sort of knowing. “I’ll see you boys inside,” she says, and disappears into the chaos.

Billy fidgets, lingering near the driver’s door. He’s spinning Nancy’s keys around his finger like he’s going to jump back in the car and run. Steve is impatient to get inside, but he walks up next to Billy and leans against the car. He waits him out, listening to the sound of someone inside yell at someone else about something not being centered. 

The whole thing grounds Steve more than he’d like to admit. He’d grown up in an often--but not always--empty house. He loves coming home to this one that is so full.

Billy finally rolls his eyes and stuffs his hands into his coat pocket. “After you,” he says with a little half-bow. Steve grins.

Inside, the house is all the warm chaos Steve had expected.

When they walk in, Lucas is standing on a chair adjusting some sort of garland. Steve privately thinks Eleven should be doing that. Wonders if she isn’t because of Billy. That would explain the yelling, because Dustin is standing back sort of framing the wall with his fingers like he’s making a movie. “A little more left,” Dustin is saying, and when Lucas wobbles, it becomes clear Dustin is actually supposed to be playing the role of spotter. It’s a lost cause; he completely abandons his duties to run over and give Steve a hug. Dustin gives Billy a sort of up-down, and then they do a complicated handshake that Billy definitely doesn’t understand. Lucas wobbles again and Dustin runs back to spot, and Billy mouths _what the fuck_ at Steve before Will gives them a desperate look and shoves them into the kitchen.

“Company plates,” Eleven says with a bright smile, unpacking--by hand, definitely something to do with Billy--big crates of what looks like very old china.

“They were my mother’s,” Joyce is explaining. “Hello boys. Anyway, I honestly forgot we had them, but El and Mike have been looking at table settings in magazines for weeks and I found the box in the attic and I just thought it would be nice. They’re very dusty though.” She sneezes for emphasis.

Eleven grins again and unwraps a few more plates, motioning at Steve and Billy to come closer. Steve sheds his coat and then grabs Billy’s. He drapes them both over a chair and wanders over to Eleven. He takes a plate from her to look at, can’t help but smile. The plates are beautiful, a creamy white with a clear blue design and a gold edge that would be gaudy, maybe, if Steve weren’t fully committed to this capital P production of a holiday for these kids.

El unwraps another plate and sighs dramatically. There’s dust on it, and something brown that must come from the boxes. She looks at the plate and then at the sink. Steve is holding the edges of a box Max is trying to untape when Eleven holds the plate up, waves it in Billy’s direction and says, “Wash, please.” 

Max’s hand stutters where it’s pulling the tape. Steve looks up and Billy’s face is doing something weird. He opens his mouth to ask if everything is all right, when Max stretches an arm out and grabs for the plate before launching herself at the sink like she’s spring loaded. “I’ll do it,” she says, kind of hurried. Billy’s face is still doing a thing. “Billy doesn’t like to wash dishes.”

Steve thinks of every joke he’s ever made about Billy being the worst dish-washer ever that has fallen a little flat, thinks about the look on Max’s face, thinks about the look on Billy’s, and makes an educated guess. El’s expression is tough to read, so Steve goes with his instincts. “Billy,” he says, easily, “Go help the kids with the garland. Dustin is going to cause Lucas’s death and I can’t deal with the crying that’ll lead to.”

Billy looks relieved when he slips out of the kitchen, but it’s the sag in Max’s shoulders that convinces Steve he’s right. After a few minutes of silent plate washing--Max, plate drying--Steve, and plate unpacking--Eleven, El looks at Max, confused and says, “Christmas?”

“Don’t do that,” Max says, frowning. “I don’t like it when you do that.”

“Sorry,” Eleven says, but doesn’t really look it.

Steve wonders, throwing the dishrag over his shoulder, how much Eleven knows. She’ll have an idea from whatever the kids told her, which he thinks given all the time they’ve recently spent with Billy--and all the times he’s called about him--is probably most of everything worth knowing. Anything else he supposes she’s filled in herself. Eleven is quiet, eyes flicking from Max to Steve and back again. Max’s scolding hasn’t put her off; she clearly expects an answer.

Steve whips the dishrag off his shoulder to dry the next plate Max hands him. “Billy and his dad got into an argument when we were here for Christmas,” he says, like it was a little, normal fight between father and son. “About dishwashing, apparently.” He’d never asked Billy what had happened to bring Billy to his doorstep that night. He should have, he realizes. He’d just assumed.

El looks very sad, all of the sudden, it’s like someone pulled the plug on a bright light. “Oh,” she says, quietly. She looks past Steve into the living room, where Steve imagines Billy is giving the boys a hard time about the garland. She’s looking kind of distant, “Listening,” she says when Steve stares at her.

Max turns the water up higher with a frown, but they both know that won’t stop Eleven’s listening, no matter how much it apparently annoys Max that she’s doing it. The sound of the water sloshing around the basin of the sink and slurping down the drain fills the kitchen. There’s a current of sadness in the room that even Steve can feel, so he can’t imagine what it must be like for Eleven. In the other room, there’s the sound of a teetering chair, Lucas swearing, and Billy laughing. Eleven nods once at the sound. “Better,” She says, looking at Steve full of meaning. 

Steve feels a little raw under her gaze, “Good,” he says quietly.

The day passes in a frenzy of preparation. Max has to leave around 3 and Lucas goes with her. Jonathan takes Will and Mike and Dustin to the video store. Steve isn’t sure where Joyce went, but Hopper hasn’t been around all day, so he has his theories. 

Nancy and Steve, once the sun has set and things have started to quiet down, slip out back to share a cigarette. They sneak, actually, like they’re still in high school and have to hide it. They’re both giggling as they settle next to each other, legs pressed together, out back. 

Steve had left Billy dozing on the couch and thinks, as he lights the cigarette between Nancy’s lips, that this is a future he could give Billy, if Billy wants it. One that is both Chicago and Hawkins. Nancy doesn’t really smoke, but Steve has always loved to watch her when she does. She looks like something out of a magazine, untouchable and cool, but when she looks at him her eyes are all fond warmth, and he loves that more.

“Things seem better,” she says easily, like he hadn’t had an emotional breakdown on the phone with her less than a week ago.

“It’s not easy,” he admits. “But it’s--we’re working on it.”

“If you can figure the stuff out that hurts you both,” she says quietly, “And I mean really figure it out, Steve, these last few months haven’t exactly been healthy for either of you--” He opens his mouth to protest, but she puts her hand over it. “Figure that stuff out, and then I think you’re good for each other.”

Steve licks her palm and she squeaks in protest. The conversation is less heavy after that.

Nancy is telling him about a boy in her classes who reminds her a bit of old Steve--King Steve--when Eleven appears, clutching a piece of paper in her hand. “We need things,” she announces, waving the paper at Steve and Nancy.

“Don’t look at me,” Steve protests, “I don’t have a car.”

“Take mine,” Nancy says, standing up and brushing her pants off. “There’s no way I’m going out again. I’m going to go nap on the couch like Billy.” She drops her keys in Steve’s lap and flounces off. Eleven waves the paper at Steve again, staring. Steve wonders why the two people he has been in love with in his life get to take a nap. Eleven stares harder. _Because he’s whipped_ says the part of his brain that sounds like Dustin.

“Ok, ok,” Steve says. “I’m going. Is this everything? You’re sure?”

Which is how Steve finds himself in the grocery store, not twenty minutes later, trying to collect the rest of what they’ll need for Easter dinner. Maybe it’s because of the cold, or maybe because of the impending snowfall, or maybe it’s because everyone else in Hawkins is more prepared than they are, but the store is pretty empty. Just a handful of people walking around looking just as miserable as Steve feels. He leans on the cart and heaves a sigh, squinting at the list and trying to decide which kind of wafer El wants.

“Steve?”

Steve turns at the sound of Max’s voice. She looks equal parts confused and horrified. “Hey, kid,” Steve says, relieved to have a second opinion on the wafers. “Listen which kind of--”

“Max? Who are you talking to?”

And that’s how Steve meets Billy’s dad: in the middle of the grocery store with Max’s wide, bright eyes on them both.

“Ah,” Steve says, dropping the box he’d been holding into the cart. There’s a moment where he just stares kind of dumbly at Billy’s dad before his instincts kick in. “Hi, sir, I’m Steve--Harrington,” he adds and, after a pause, he holds his hand out. Billy’s dad shakes it. His grip is firm and cool. He smiles. 

“I’ve met your parents a few times,” the man says, kind of thoughtful, and Steve thinks that’s so fucking weird, even though he already knew that, because most of the time Steve feels like he’s barely met his own parents. “Home for Easter?”

“Yes,” Steve answers, which is half true. As far as he knows his parents are out of town the whole weekend, but home is a relative term. “Just doing a bit of last minute shopping for dinner--have to make sure everything’s perfect.” This is fucking surreal.

“My wife, Susan, is the same,” Billy’s dad says, shaking his head ruefully. “The kid won’t even be home, she has something with her friends, but Susan likes a nice holiday, so I oblige her.”

Steve doesn’t miss that he refers to kid and not kids. He glances at Max, who is just kind of blinking at them both. He wishes she would look a little less horrified because it’s giving him the jitters.

Steve looks at Billy’s dad and thinks that the worst thing, the _scariest_ thing in this moment is that Neil Hargrove doesn’t seem like an angry person. He doesn’t seem mean, or nasty, or violent. He doesn’t carry himself or talk like the kind of guy Steve pictures beating the shit out of his son. He looks like a stern dad, clean shaven like Steve’s dad, except for the mustache, talking about how he has a honey-do list to get through with an acquaintance's son in the grocery store. It’s so fucking normal that Steve’s eyeballs ache, they must be ready to pop out of his head. He’s trying so hard to make this not a big deal.

“That’s uh,” Steve says, “Really good, sir. I hope your dinner--” what does he hope? He honestly has no idea, tastes like rotten flesh? Burns to a crisp? Makes you choke and die? “Is--good.”

Max’s eyes are still wide and Steve feels like the conversation is over, so he’s turning slowly back toward the wafers when Billy’s dad says, “Hold on a second, son.”

Steve turns back around. “Uh, yes, sir?” and he wishes he had the balls to be ruder, or to punch Billy’s dad in the face, or to cause a scene. He just stands there, staring.

“You called in November about Billy, didn’t you? Looking for my daughter?”

 _Billy_ , Steve’s brain screams, _my daughter_.

“I did, sir, yes.”

“Hmm,” Neil Hargrove’s face does this subtle shifting thing. It’s less friendly, a little meaner. “I hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble. You have a good family. I wouldn’t want him in the way.”

Steve feels his hackles rise and pastes on a really polite fucking smile, “He _is_ \--” Steve says, then pauses, makes sure Billy’s dad catches the present tense, “Never in my way. In fact, he’s always welcome. Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I have a list,” and he glances at Max for a heartbeat before he turns and walks away.

Once he makes it around the corner, Steve basically runs to frozen food. Stands with his back pressed against a display case, breathing hard for a long, long time. He thinks that if Neil Hargrove looks like that, it’s no wonder Billy never bothered to tell anyone. He thinks that if Neil Hargrove has always looked like that and Billy has always looked like Billy, it wouldn’t have fucking mattered. No one would have believed him.

“Fuck,” he says, too loudly, and an old woman digging through the display case next to him looks familiar enough--and makes such an affronted sound--that he worries she’ll tell his mother. He runs away.

~

“Thanks for the ride, Nance,” Steve says, leaning through the passenger window of Nancy’s car. The groceries had been left under Eleven’s watchful gaze, and Billy, who had _still been asleep_ on the couch when Steve returned, a little shaken from the grocery store, had been roused with minor injuries to Steve’s pride and shoved into the back seat of Nancy’s car. Steve feels tired and a little wrung out from meeting Billy’s dad. This is something they’re going to have to Talk About, and Steve is trying not to feel too freaked out about it. “I’m going to take one of my parents’ cars tomorrow so you don’t have to worry about picking us up,” he says. He reaches through the window and makes sure her car door is locked, a habit he’s never been able to shake. 

She watches, but doesn’t say anything except, “Ok,” to the thing about the car, and then she smiles sort of bright and private as Billy drapes himself over Steve’s back, lookse and sleepy. His arms settle around Steve’s waist, and Billy hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder. His hair kind of tickles against Steve’s neck, and Steve can feel the rise and fall of Billy’s breathing as Billy leans into him.

Nancy’s smile goes even brighter. Steve can feel himself blushing. “Night, boys,” she says, rolling up the window against the night chill. Steve waves enthusiastically as she leaves, dislodging Billy on purpose, who grumbles.

“I don’t get why you’re so fucking tired,” Steve says, still watching Nancy’s disappearing car. Billy huffs a sigh into his ear. “You slept like, the entire day. You put up one garland!” 

“I watched Lucas put up a garland,” Billy corrects him through a yawn. “My job was to keep Dustin from killing him. I was very good at it.” Steve laughs and turns around, hooks his arm around Billy’s waist and pulls him into the big, empty house. “No lights, c’mon, bedtime,” Billy says when Steve reaches for the switch. There’s a vague, blue glow at the other end of the house, the pool, and Steve flinches, but Billy drags his cold nose against Steve’s cheek, and Steve breathes in and out a few times before, one foot in front of the other, they make it into his bedroom.

He doesn’t turn the light on in there, either, feels brave in the dark, kisses Billy up against the door in the soft glow from outside. It’s reckless and peaceful all at once. Honesty comes naturally after that.

“I met your dad tonight,” Steve says when Billy’s sitting at the end of the bed untying his shoes. Billy whips his head up so fast that Steve can hear his neck crack. He winces. “Sorry, that was shitty delivery.” Steve takes a few steps forward and cards his fingers through Billy’s hair. Billy leans his head against Steve’s palm and doesn’t say anything. “It wasn’t--a big thing. He was with Max in the store when I went to get stuff and I introduced myself because he asked.” Steve isn’t sure if this is the right thing to say, if he should have kept it a secret, if he should have been ruder. “I just saw him. It was--it wasn’t a big thing.”

“Oh,” Billy says, kind of deflating. He turns his head and kisses Steve’s palm. The gesture is so intimate that Steve’s whole body feels like it’s on fire, but in kind of a good way. Steve pulls back just enough to shrug out of his shirt and jeans. He crawls into bed in his briefs, moving around Billy so that Steve can sleep with the wall at his back. Billy smacks his ass, which makes Steve laugh, and he flops down and nestles under the covers.

“Come here,” Steve says, still kind of laughing. He shoves at Billy’s shoulder. “Move faster.” Billy gets his shoes off, and his shirt, and his pants, “Jesus, do you _ever_ wear underwear? There were _children_ \--” Steve starts, but he’s cut off when Billy kisses him. 

It’s Billy, that night who curls into Steve with his head on Steve’s chest, less like an octopus than like an extension of Steve’s own body. “I have never been to this shithole town and not seen him,” Billy murmurs after a while, when Steve’s arm has started falling asleep--is it this uncomfortable for Billy when Steve does the octopus thing? He’s got to ask. Steve tangles his fingers in Billy’s hair, tugs gently, so Billy’s looking at him. “I’ve never talked to Max on the phone and not also talked to him,” Billy says, holding his gaze.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Steve admits. “I didn’t like, punch him or anything. I didn’t expect him to seem so normal.”

“Yeah,” Billy says, “I’m the only thing that brings out that side of him.”

“You’re not a fucking _thing_ ,” Steve spits, sudden and vehement, but Billy just sort of pats his chest.

“Settle down, Harrington, I wasn’t do a self-loathing bit this time.” There’s a smile tugging at the corners of Billy’s mouth, and he drags his fingertips up and down Steve’s arm.

Steve plays idly with Billy’s hair and listens to the sounds of them both breathing. “I kind of polite-rich-person told him to go fuck himself, though,” he says after a while.

“Oh yeah?” Billy asks, snorting.

“I basically told him I was still, y’know, seeing you--not like-- _that_ , I don’t think? But I made it clear you were in my life and then I said, ‘Excuse me, I have a list.’”

Billy sits up in bed so fast that Steve has to work extra hard to make sure he doesn’t pull on his hair. For a second, Steve thinks he’s done something wrong, but Billy’s just laughing. Like a real deep belly kind of laugh. “Excuse me,” he parrots, “I have a _list_. Jesus, Harrington, you really are something else.”

Billy doesn’t really cuddle much, but he lets Steve hold him the whole fucking night. Steve doesn’t even try to let go, keeps Billy pulled into his chest, even when his arm starts to tingle, even when he can’t feel it anymore, even when Billy drools all over him.

~

There are candles on the table, and a tablecloth, and everything is glowing a sort of soft, flickering yellow. Steve is wearing a button down shirt, open at the throat, no tie-- “It’s _fashionable_ Nancy says in the bathroom at the Byers’s. Steve’s not sure about that. He’s kind of scrawny. He does and undoes the top buttons of his shirt a few times, trying to get it right. Nancy’s smiling at him in the mirror, fussing with the ends of her hair. “How do I look?” she asks, doing a little spin that flares out the edges of her skirt.

Once, his voice would have caught in his throat, but now he gets to tell her honestly, and full of love, “You look beautiful, Nance,” and mean it in a way that doesn’t make him ache all over.

When they walk back out, Steve watches the way Jonathan reaches for Nancy. It’s easy, or it looks it, the way he catches her fingers and pulls her to sit on the arm of the chair he’s claimed for himself. Steve realizes he’s staring when Nancy catches his gaze, follows the line of her sight when she cuts her eyes away.

Billy’s on the other side of the room. He’s talking with Eleven--Steve can’t hear them, but she looks up almost as soon as Steve’s eyes land on them both. Billy glances up because she does, and from across the room, Steve gets a glance so private that he thinks he might be blushing. When he loses the staring contest he didn’t realize he’d entered, Eleven looks pleased and amused. Steve thinks of the way that Jonathan had reached for Nancy, but he doesn’t do that. It doesn’t feel like them. He waits until Billy’s ready, until Billy walks across the room to ask him something while El retreats to the kitchen, following the sound of Joyce’s voice.

It’s kind of weird to stand with Billy in the living room where Billy had once beaten the shit out of him, but on the long list of weird shit in their past, Steve supposed it doesn’t really rank very high. Billy’s asking him about the name of a bar they’ve gone to a few times in Chicago because he thinks Jonathan might like it. That’s probably weirder than the time they had a physical fight.

Eleven walks out of the kitchen and makes a beeline for Will. She leans over and whispers something into his ear. Will glances at Steve and Billy, looks horrified to be caught, and then turns and whispers something furiously back to her. “What’s up with that?” Steve murmurs to Mike when he walks by.

“You don’t need to whisper,” Mike says with an eyeroll, “She’s going to know you’re talking about her. With them it’s like a sibling thing. El’s never really had one, and Will likes having a sister. They do it a lot.”

Steve has seem them do it, he just doesn’t qualify it as _a lot_ , but then he isn’t in Hawkins as much as he used to be. Just for the holidays. He glances at Billy and loses his train of thought. He thinks the earring Billy’s wearing tonight is kind of funny and clever; it’s a cross and it dangles almost to his shoulder. It’s not original or anything for Easter, Steve supposes, but he thinks it’s funny and clever anyway. 

“You’re such a fucking goner for him, man,” Dustin says softly, suddenly at Steve’s shoulder. This whole night is fucking surreal, but in a much different way than the meeting in the grocery store had been. Steve, who has spent three years running away from monsters, can barely stand looking around this glowing, softly lit room filled with the people he loves. It feels too perfect, like it could shatter. It feels so fucking good.

“Dinner,” says Joyce, and then it’s perfect and also chaotic, as six teenagers and four twenty-somethings and two _incredibly_ patient adults try at once to sit at a table and eat food.

Steve and Billy manage to stake out seats next to each other, and Billy’s knee presses against Steve’s thigh under the table. Joyce starts passing the food around, and Steve takes a giant scoop of everything until--

He stares in confusion at the full bowl Dustin’s just handed him. “Uhm,” he says, looking up at everyone.

“What is it? Is something wrong?” Joyce asks, looking concerned.

“No, no,” Steve says. He looks at Nancy and then down at the plate. “It’s just--you’ve made brussels sprouts.” He looks at the plate again, blinking.

“Yes,” Joyce says, “I have.”

“Ok,” Steve says, not wanting to be rude. “It’s just--no one likes brussels sprouts? That’s why this is full,” he bounces it in her direction to show her that no one, not one of them, has touched them. He’s right, he knows he’s right. None of the kids like brussels sprouts, and Hopper has waged a war against them at other holidays. He knows none of them like them, which is why no one has taken a single scoop, not even to be polite.

“Billy likes them,” Max says, totally normally, but Steve feels like cold water has been dumped on his head. “They’re his favorite vegetable.”

“Oh,” says Steve, looking at Billy and then at all the faces around the table, looking back at him like he’s absolutely lost it. “Uh,” he says, eloquently. He looks at the bowl in his hand. Billy kicks him under the table. “I didn’t know you liked---vegetables?” Steve tries.

Billy gives him this look that Steve _knows_ means if there were a chair to tip he’d tip it over right now, but there isn’t a chair to tip, and Steve looks back around the table, can’t stop the way his gaze is drawn to Joyce, who has made a vegetable no one likes because _Billy loves them_. His heart is definitely going to explode. 

Billy takes the bowl from him and scoops like half the brussel sprouts onto his own plate before he dumps the rest of them onto Steve’s plate. Steve stares at them with shock and not a little skepticism, but he still eats every last one.

Everyone is nice to each other over dinner. It’s maybe the best night of Steve’s entire life.

Too full and a little hazy at the edges, Steve and Billy slip out the front door once everything that needs to be cleaned for the night has been stowed away. There’s a debate starting about after dessert activities, but Steve relishes the frozen silence of Hawkins around him. The moon’s gone, long since hidden behind the clouds, and it’s dark. Steve doesn’t feel as scared by it as he’d expected. He drops down heavily, stretching his legs out in front of him, and lets Billy light the cigarette Steve’s got between his lips. He winks when Billy does it, just to be silly. He’s just passing it to Billy when the first few snowflakes fall.

It’ll be the last snow of the season, Steve thinks, for them at least. Back in Chicago it’ll start getting warm again. Soon there will be green on the trees. In the summer, maybe he and Billy can go fuck around on a lake somewhere. When Steve first met Billy, all in denim, and shirtless on the basketball court, and outside this very fucking house, his skin had that glow that comes from being outside. Steve thinks he’d like to help Billy get it back.

“You’re quiet tonight,” Billy says, blowing smoke away from Steve’s face. “It usually takes a lot to shut you up.”

Steve thinks about the mug, the one from Lucas’s sister, the one that Billy broke. He takes the cigarette back from Billy and takes a long drag, thinking about the good parts of Hawkins, which isn’t really home, anymore. “I am never going to expect you to---want this place,” he says finally. He presses closer to Billy against the chilly night air, holds the cigarette between his lips and stretches out a hand to catch snowflakes. Billy reaches out and thumbs Steve’s bottom lip before he takes the cigarette back. “I just,” Steve says, watching snow melt on his fingertips, “I want you to know that--that it makes me happy that you came here. With me. For me, I mean.” God, his mouth and brain are fucking useless.

“I’m glad I came with you, too,” Billy says, soft and just for Steve, right before he ruins a perfectly good moment by leering and grabbing Steve’s dick through his nice dress pants, and Steve’s embarrassed at both the want in his stomach and how public the action is.

“Children!” he yelps, shoving Billy away and actually just managing to knock himself off balance. He’s sprawled on his back, staring at a cloudy, snowy Hawkins sky, laughing until his ribs hurt. “Jesus,” he says to Billy, who kicks his shin kind of affectionately. He thinks of saying _let’s go home_ , but they have bus tickets for tomorrow, and he can hear the sounds of a board game slash movie argument beginning inside, and Steve doesn’t want to leave yet, is so glad that Billy is here with him.

“Billy!” someone shouts from inside, Dustin, it sounds like. “We’re going to need you in here!” There’s a pause while Steve tips his head to the side to look toward the door, confused. “Billy!” Dustin calls, sounding a little more desperate. “You’re definitely gonna to have to kill the Chief. Hope that’s ok! We’re gonna need you _now_ , though!”

Steve lifts his head up and watches Billy put the cigarette out in an ashtray that must belong to Joyce. He’s still kind of laughing when Billy extends a hand to help Steve to his feet. “C’mon, Harrington,” he says, kind of soft and fond, and Steve feels light and weighted all at once. He grabs Billy’s hand, gets to his feet and doesn’t let go. He kisses Billy with a little more passion than the Byers’s front step calls for. He doesn’t have to say _I love you_ because Billy gets it, bumps his nose against Steve’s and grins. “I think I want to play a board game,” he says, and Steve groans, because if Billy joins team Board Game he’s never going to hear the end of it.

He follows Billy inside and they hold hands while the kids argue, and he feels like they’ve figured out the language after all. It isn’t fucking easy, Steve thinks, trying--without dropping Billy’s hand--to defend himself from the series of popcorn chunks Max is now throwing at him, but it is fucking worth it.

~

They are sitting at their kitchen table in Chicago. The tv is off. It is early in the morning and sun shines through their kitchen window, tiny though it is.

Steve thinks about all of that, catalogs these details and relishes every single pronoun. _Their_ his brain screams at him, _ours_.

“What time do you get out of work?” Billy asks him, looking up from the newspaper he’s reading. It’s a thing that had surprised Steve--how much time Billy spends reading literally anything. Signs, closed captions when they’re on, the newspaper, a magazine, actual books. 

“Late today,” Steve admits. With the warmer weather his shifts are stretching longer as the cafe gets busier and Chicago drinks coffee later into the day. He could use the money, is saving it away when he can. He’s liked this little apartment that’s theirs, now, but it’s small and it’s been three years. He wants them to be able to afford something better. Maybe with an extra bedroom for when the kids come to visit.

“We don’t have any food,” Billy says, then grins, a little sheepish.

Steve’s jaw drops. “But--”

“I know,” Billy says. “I ate it.”

“What the fuck, Hargrove?” Steve asks, but he’s laughing.

“I’ll go to the store. I get out early today. Don’t worry about it,” Billy answers.

The sentence is so simple, and it’s so fucking sweet. Steve gets out of his chair so that he can walk around the table and straddle Billy in his chair, instead. He kisses him, hands in Billy’s hair, while Billy’s hand pushes up under the back of Steve’s tshirt. Billy’s fingertips press against the small of Steve’s back, and when Steve pulls away, he looks around their kitchen in their apartment in their city that is now home.

“Hey,” Steve says, so quietly, his forehead pressed against Billy’s.

“Yeah?” Billy whispers back, then, “Why are we whispering?”

“Shut up, asshole. I’m trying to tell you that I love you.”

And Steve’s said it before, a bunch of times, and he knows that Billy feels the same, and his stomach is warm and every inch of him is content right up until--

“Yeah,” Billy says, fingertips pressed against Steve’s back, still. “I love you too, asshole.”

And it’s Steve’s fault, really it is, it’s just Billy has never said it, not _out loud_ and he startles a little, and he wriggles wrong, and Billy tries to steady him but overcompensates and--

\--the chair they are sitting in tips over. From a tangled heap on their kitchen floor, Billy and Steve can’t stop laughing, and Steve thinks they might, for once, understand each other perfectly. _Finally_ , says the part of Steve’s brain that sounds like Billy. 

Steve exhales, face against Billy’s neck, and believes--like he has never believed before--that this is the start of _better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a really long time (since 2013!!!) since I've written anything at all, and it's been such a delight to write about these two, and get such wonderful feedback, and read so many excellent fics! Thank you all, so so much. I can't believe how long this got.
> 
> Also, I have a [tumblr](http://lymricks.tumblr.com/) now and I don't really know how to use it, but I want to follow everyone and write a lot so come hang out with me there and scream about these two if you want.


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